The tragedy of life is that we are all dating/married to a summer bunny’s Ex. Worse, we might even be dating/married to an ex-summer bunny. At work we sit across a summer bunny’s cousin, or step brother,hydrating from the same water dispenser. When we leave the office and walk to the lunch place, the little dive with three tables and a small metallic sink, and order those divine chapos the size of KOT’s ego, you will hear a summer bunny’s cousin say, “Madhe kwani today you didn’t make managus?”
When you are in traffic and you refuse to give way to that elderly lady bulldozing her way into your lane with her vintage 420 SEL, you could be blocking a summer bunny’s mom. And God is seeing you. The radios will suddenly sputter with the summer bunny’s favourite songs. Kina Fresh Prince’s Summertime. Bars will have theme nights for summer bunnies, selling buckets of beer for a discount because really, what do you drink when you are in the summer? Are you wearing the “new” Kenneth Cole scent? That was a Summer Bunny’s scent last year. Which means, to the summer bunnies, you exist in the past. You also need to upgrade your Whatsapp before you chat with a summer bunny.
And so you might not know it, but our lives are irrevocably intertwined with summer bunnies. You might say we are joined at the hip – but only if you have had too much to drink.
Humour me. Walk up to your window. Look up at the sky. See those dark clouds? See how they hang heavy? Well, get a strong wide umbrella because it’s about to rain summer bunnies. They are coming.
I have a friend who’s coming down from Minnesota. Oh, I’m sorry, did I not pronounce it correctly? “Minnesorra.” By all intents and purposes he’s a very fresh guy (when you can get past his annoying electronic cigarette). I’ve known him for 10 years now. Which means when he asked me to pick him from the airport when he touches down I said Hell yeah, because he’s my boy and it’s been a while. He will land pretty late, at about midnight, then of course he will have to go through immigration and get affronted and get indignant when our terrific KRA guys stop him and ask him what is in his mountain of suitcases. He will probably have the sleeping eyepatch stuck on his forehead or hanging under his chin, and he will most likely be in white sneakers and a heavy coat with silver buckles and a hat. He will be clutching a Blackberry – which means he will be the only soul with a Blackberry between JKIA and Kinungi.
I will be standing there at International Arrivals, hands so deep in my pockets I could be touching my knees, standing in solidarity with that wall of humanity huddling for warmth in the midnight cold, some holding up name placards, others just holding their chins against the cold.
He will finally walk out pushing what seems like his whole life on that trolley. Of course I will be thrilled to see him. His skin will look richer. He will most likely be heavier. We will embrace – five years’ worth of an embrace. He will most likely smell good; of cologne and of Schiphol Airport. We will walk out, past the army security guy with a semi-automatic weapon slung across his chest, and he will look at him briefly and I will secretly dare him to comment on anything that starts with “security”, “terrorism” or “safety.” I will be thinking, “Collo, go ahead, ask me how safe it is now. Go ahead. I dare you.” But he will be jet lagged and he will be happy to be back to motherland so he will not say a word. JKIA will surprise him as it surprises everybody else because you really have to go through most African airports to appreciate JKIA.
I once had a connecting flight through Accra Ghana at midnight. The flight was from Amsterdam or someplace, coming back home from Europe. We landed at Kotoka International Airport at midnight. It was a marketplace. It was loud and boisterous and hectic and rundown and the Ghanaian hawkers – in bathroom slippers – were there imploring you to buy spices and all sorts of merchandise and their immigration guys asked for bribes so blatantly I thought they had a daily quota. And they all looked bored and sported sad faded uniforms and everybody seemed to be speaking at the same time and laughing at the same time and the energy was through the roof which, incidentally, looked saggy and worn.
The client – Procter and Gamble – was flying us Business, so we ended up in the Premium lounge, but a Premium Lounge in Kotoka International Airport isn’t what it sounds like. The lounge looked like the staff-room of Gathaithi Primary School in Murang’a. I sat opposite a colorful and striking West African lady with terrific complexion, the longest nails I have seen outside the Harry Porter series and this ridiculously large hairstyle on her head, talking loudly into her mobile, and I wondered how that heavy-looking hairstyle hadn’t broken her neck already. Or how an owl hadn’t claimed it as his home. I bet that hair was a conversation starter: “Excuse me? Hi…hey, I’m sorry, but do you know Carol Odero?”
Anyway.
My summer bunny pal has said that the first thing he wants to do when he lands, even before he removes his shoes, is to have a Tusker baridi. (Pronounced Tusker beridi). If for nothing at all, you have to be there to watch a summer bunny drink his first beer or his first bite of nyam-chom. You have to watch as he pours his ka cold beer in his glass, something he has been dreaming of for a while now.
And once it’s frothed in that glass and they lift it to their lips and they close their eyes as soon as the form touches their upper lip and they tilt the glass and you watch the golden liquid drain between their lips as they gulp down the cold beer. Then watch how they swallow loudly then slowly sit the glass down and lick the thin film of foam off their lips and they have that look on their faces; a look of complete resignation.That look that says that they are surprised how good it would be to be back home.
Back to Collo.
Question: Where else can you take a summer bunny who has just landed on a Thursday? Answer: K1 Klubhouse Reggae Night, of course. Where else? Thursdays at Klubhouse is full. It’s loud. It’s hysterical. It hum and thuds. The cherry on this cake is that you are assured to find all these middle-class types in their suede Bally loafers who are too scared to go to Mad House because they are afraid rastas will steal their iPhones and step on their beloved loafers.
K1 has taken reggae music mainstream. Made it “safe for consumption” by the highly impressionable uppity Nairobi crowd. K1 has finally repackaged reggae music for the middle-class, made it cool and not as “desperate” as reggae music once seemed. There, every Thursday, you will find a whole legion of “rastas” from Nairobi’s apparently leafy ‘burbs (basically Kile guys in their dolled up and tinted Crown Majestas), jumping to Bob, swaying to Gregory and grinding to Cure. And presiding over this Jamaican middle-class hoo-hah will be the high priest himself, Kriss Darling, the pied piper, leading his flock (and their Instgram followers) to Zion.
K1 on Thursdays is where two conflicting worlds collide. A stunning cultural intersection. And here is where I will throw Collo, the summer bunny, right in the deep end of it and I’m sure he will mostly likely run into some fine bird he went to campus or high school with (they always do), a chick in a very small dress and even smaller breasts and things will be going so well for him because she will dump her pals three tables away and she will be laughing at his Minesorra jokes, massaging the back of his neck, grinding her big ass against his distressed Pepe, they singing along to Sizzla, right up until she turns and shouts at me – mid-laughter- over a now groaning Gramps Morgan, “I’ve so missed Collo, this guy is like a brother to me,” and Collo and I will exchange that alarming look when you realise that you have just been friend-zoned. His Tusker will suddenly taste like strungi.(Is it only jangos who call it strungi? Or orungi. Hehe.) I will see him drain his beer faster than I can blink so that he can cut his losses and go get some much needed shuteye at the hotel.
The last time I wrote about the diaspora folk they got quite sore. They said I was too negative. But if we are being honest, most of us will tell you that you – summer bunnies – are hard to love. That you are mostly annoying. You are like an antibiotic without a capsule. Why are you hard to love? Because when you come home you make it look like you have come to shags. Almost like you are surprised that we have on shoes and have instant hot water shower. You come here and act like you have just been transported to 1998, and that the hottest song in the county is The Boy is Mine, by who was that again, Brandy? And that when you hear us sing along to Fetty Wap you seem surprised. Well, we hate that condescending shit.
I also would like to say that some of you are cool. It’s the bad apples that annoy us. So this isn’t a blanket generalisation.
But we want to get along with you, we have to get along because we will drink with you and house you, and drive you around and hook you up with chicks if you want. So we have to get along.
We would like to welcome you with your dollars, pounds, euros, rands and rupees. (Ati now guys from Jozi are also summer bunnies, because it’s snowing in Rosebank!) But we would also like to have you know that we are going through some trying times and all back here at home. (Aren’t we always?) First, cancer is screwing us over. Then you will notice that half of our leaders are abroad to learn about what makes good food good food. Only we aren’t calling it that, we are calling it “benchmarking tours.” Don’t laugh.The weather is unpredictable. Sossion hasn’t said a word. Strathmore University, seated in the corner, has refused to remove its foot from its mouth. You might also see a lot of Chinese people, some roasting maize by the roadside. Do what we have learnt to do; look away. And whatever you do, don’t mention Eurobond in a bar. Or outside Ambassadeur Hotel in the evening around those Luo relaz of mine in broken suits stand around holding their folded newspapers & talking politics. And so because of all these problems Kenyans on Twitter are on edge. But for all the glum happenings, at least no bombs have gone off recently (knock on wood) even though our shilling went off ages ago. And you are safe, in case you are wondering…well, you have a higher chance being shot in a drill.
We want you to remember that this is our home. YOUR home. We chose to remain behind to keep the lights on. Someone has to. It’s broken, and it keeps breaking and one day, we may hit rock bottom and then maybe we will start rising again, but it’s still home and we remain touchy about it. Ask the South Africans and the Nigerians on Twitter, who we burnt at the stake.
But please when we sit down with you for a drink, you can tell us what’s wrong with Kenya but please don’t say “you people,” when you express your comments. Not even when you are the one buying the drinks. Also don’t act surprised at things that don’t work. If a matatu cuts right in front of us, don’t look like it’s the most insane thing you have seen in your life – aside watching Fox news. And please we beg you to keep it quiet. Just so you know, you guys are always easy to pick out in a bar. You know why? Because most of you are loud. If you aren’t loud in person you are loud in your dressing. Seriously, shades in a club at night? Even P-Unit stopped that shit.
So, come home, keep your head low, go to K1, smoke shisha at Tambourin rooftop lounge at The Kempinski, adopt a cheetah at KWS, fly down to coasto and try and rescue Mombasa from the small-pox of Travel Advisories and maybe go look for land to invest in around Athi River. But don’t say anything that will set us off, because we are dealing with too much now.
To fellow Kenyans I think it is our duty to quieten the Summer Bunnies down, and the quickest way to do that is to take them to Thika Road. I love how Thika Road always surprises summer bunnies, especially those who were last here when Bubbles was THE club. But don’t take them Thika road when it rains, because then it will remind them of the Thames. (Which I’m yet to see). Every Kenyan hosting a summer bunny owes it to the sanity of the country to drive them to Thika Road. Thika Road is the only thing in Nairobi that says we have moved an inch. Thika Road says, look at us, we aren’t doing so badly after all. We have lit tunnels. We have eight lanes. We have working street lights. We have speed bumps. And the roads are marked as C32 and A2. And when you look inside matatus, nobody stands anymore. Thika road is our glass half full. Take them, let them see the wonder of development.
But mostly let us be very accommodative to summer bunnies. Even if they want to drink with us daily. Or if they keep asking silly questions about the speed of our WIFI. Or ask loudly why cops control traffic at working traffic lights; because we have not noticed this ourselves.
Mostly we ask God to give us the strength to accept them as our brothers and sisters because they have brought us pounds & dollars which God knows we need now. Most importantly we want God to give us the patience to explain that it isn’t as bad as it seems. That we – human beings – actually live here! That we haven’t perished yet, and that perhaps when our leaders finally find the secret of good food out there in Europe and Asia, and carry it back in small vials, we will finally flourish from that imported nirvana.
We wish to remind them that we are much better than most of our neighbours because look, Obama came here first, didn’t he? And so did The Pope. And we took them all to Thika Road.
Karibuni nyumbani summer bunnies, so great to have you back again. I think Brian Mungei from Safaricom will be sending you the WIFI passwords in a few.