Have you ever been in a situation where strangers wanaamua kukusengenya in a language that you grasp while they assume you don't understand the language?
Recently, I went to buy kienyeji vegetable from a mama mboga shop run by a woman and her two daughters.
Nilikuwa nadai milo, the kienyeji with tiny leaves. Nikarequest wanichimbulie as I waited.
Nikasimama hapo kando wakitoa mboga wakiongea in Luhya. I was not interested in their conversation until they made me the business of their chat.
'This one anakaa ako late twenties na hajaoa bado. Nimezoea wanawake ndio hubuy mboga kaa kienyeji!' the mother told her daughters.
'Maybe ako na bibi, Mum!' the elder daughter said.
'Hakai. Wilkister bwana ndio huyu. Smile akuone!' the mother said teasingly.
I have never met Wilkister that ain't Luhya.
'Aaii, Mum mimi niko na boyfriend. Acha Josephine amuchukie yeye ndio ako single.' Wilkister said.
'Vahne, Wilkister, huyu anakaa kuwa bwana wa kuingia jikoni ajipakulie chakula kwa sufuria mwenyewe.
Anakaa mabwana wa kuhesabu pieces za nyama before and after kupika.' Esie tawe.'
'Kwanza anakaa kuniuliza mbona chapo zimetoka 28 na unga kubwa ya chapo inafaa kutoa 32?' Wilkister asked and they all burst out laughing.
'Ukiendelea kuwa picky utaendelea kuzeekea kwangu wakati wenzako wanapata mabwana!' the mother said.
'Tawe Mai!' the younger daughter declined. Walimalizia kutoa toa mboga mamayao akaniuliza in Swahili:'kijana wangu utachukua nyanya pia na vitunguu?'
I faked a smiled and said. 'nyanya sai ni expe siezi afford!' I joked. I had some in the house.
'Unaona mum, unataka mimi niende kwa huyu nikufe njaa kwa nyumba yake? Tawe Mai. Ata haezi afford nyanya.!'
I picked my vegetables and paid for the vegetable.
While taking back my balance I thanked them in Luhya. 'Murio muno.'
You should have seen the shock on their faces. The mother smiled sheepishly and asked, 'kumbe we ni mtu wa ingo?'
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My neighbor owns a powerful home-theatre. I do not own any kind of volume amplifier speakers. When she feels sufficiently philanthropic with her volume, she dictates the genre of music everyone is going to listen to.
She uses this to her advantage to exact her revenge, torture, and bully other tenants into submission of any kind.
On Friday, one of my neighbors had a birthday party. Marto. He invited only two of the tenants from our floor and some of his friends
and family but snobbed our home-theatre neighbor. I recently moved into this apartment. I don’t know if they had differences before I moved into this apartment.
The birthday party started at around 5 PM.
Kui made a living from surreptitiously spiking men’s drinks in a club in Kasarani and robbing them of their valuables; wallets, watches, and phones. She had perfected the art.
One day, the club’s management informed her that she could no longer work from their club because the police were on the club’s heels following persistent complaints from customers. They fired her.
A devastated Kui sought advice from her friend who had been in the trade for ages. Her friend suggested that she resort to the traditional form of prostitution; parading herself on the streets for selection.
Stuck at Ngara in traffic. A beggar, looking like he was going to collapse and die in a second, limped to a car beside my taxi and knocked on its window. For a minute, the driver ignored him. The beggar knocked on, rather persistently,
like he had noticed pity on the face of one of the passengers. The passenger seemed elderly. In a short conversation, it seemed like she instructed the driver to pull the window down. A generous elderly woman.
Within a split second, the beggar snatched one of the passengers’ phone while the elderly woman was reaching her purse to give him something. The beggar wasn’t frail, he had faked his guise as bait. Never seen a man run as faster as he did through a legion of jam-parked cars.
Being the largest shopping mall in Kenya makes the Two Rivers Mall one of the places every Kenyan wants to go shopping. When I had five hundred bob and a few hours to spare last Saturday, I thought, why not?
Was the hype that surrounds shopping at the mall worth it?
The first shop to enter was Carrefour. I did not take long inside the supermarket before a lady reminded me that maybe I was better placed shopping at QuickMatt, Joyland Supermarket, Naivas, and the ilk.
It all started when I was walking through the rows of stands when I noticed a beautiful lady struggling to pick an item from a stall.
True to my guess, she was struggling to pick up a bottle of Rexona from a top shelf.