Thread by @CSakwah

STORY THREAD

TBT

Her name was Mercy, the kind of a name that eats fare mercilessly. This one started eating fare a long time ago even before the atrocious feminine habit was declared a national disaster at the Men’s Conference of 2015 by Sir Freshly Mwamburi.

She had grown her eating fare talent to become the chairlady of the association of women fare-eaters, I presumed.
In Dec 2012, I met Mercy through a friend at The University of Nairobi. She was a cousin to my friend, Mike.

Mike was the type to flaunt the inbuilt beauty of his female cousins around and peddles them to his friends. She was not ata that beautiful, but she had a body to crave for.
Mercy was a student at Moi Uni at a time when the admin used to send students on impromptu long holidays.

Mercy was on a long holiday and had paid her cousin a visit in his hostel, the legendary Hall 9.
Mike and I loved playing chess during our free time. On this day, I picked my chessboard and headed to his room under the guise that I had gone to play chess.

In reality, Mike had previewed me about the impending visit from his favorite cousin. On arrival, Mercy offered to play first. I was happy to learn that she knew how to play chess. I guess that is where she learned how to play boys. She was good.

Midway through the chess game, Mike excused himself to go to town to grab something and left me at the mercy of his cousin Mercy.
A minute later, Mike texted me, ‘shoot your shot, bro. I will take time before coming back!’ I wouldn’t have been happier.

Mike had given me a through-pass on his cousin that Kevin De Bruyne would have been envious of. I was one-on-one with Mercy, and I thought myself, Kun Aguero prepared to shoot my shot at her.

What I did not expect was the magnitude of initiating a conversation with a girl that you are meeting for the first time to let your fornication intentions known to her. I was timid, or maybe cocky (literally) when I pulled a pick-up line based on a game of chess.

‘I wish I had a girl that protects me like your Queen is protecting your king on the chessboard.’
Without even lifting her head, she said, ‘You are just a university student. Maybe if you were a king or anything close to that, you would get a girl that would be a queen to you!’

I felt my toxic masculinity reduce to zero, my concentration reduced to zero. She deconstructed what I thought to be a world-class pick-up line into one of the lamest ever invented, merciless. In two moves, she checkmated me and ended the game as a winner.

After that stopper, I didn’t have the energy or courage to pursue the topic of seduction beyond that lame pick-up line.
Mike was disappointed to learn that I had not made any progress with her. Later on, we exchanged numbers after Mike intervened.

We escorted her to town to take a mat to her aunty’s place in South C. We started communicating through text messages but most of the time she would ignore my texts or calls. Our texts were the typical, hi, hae, are you good? Yes. Good day, you too. Good night, good night too.

In January the following year, she joined Webuye Hospital as an intern. I was still at home for the short December holidays when she informed me that she was on an internship at Webuye Hospital. I requested if I could meet her in Webuye on my way back to Nairobi.

I was the kind of student who stayed home until HELB was disbursed into my account before leaving for school.
I asked her out on a date in Webuye. She accepted to meet me only after I had mentioned that the date would take place at one of Webuye’s posh hotels, Park Villa Hotel.

On the Saturday that proceeded, I met Mercy at Park Villa Hotel. The agreement had been that after the lunch date at the hotel, she would take me to her room for an evening pekejeng before I left for Nairobi that evening. The bills came in excess of a thousand shillings.

1K for a student was a lot of money when spending on something else. However, it felt like 10 bob or money you could afford to lose if sex was the end product. We walked leisurely from the hotel to Webuye with my brain already switched into the pekejenging mood.

While walking back, I excused myself to buy credit in a shop nearby but ended up buying a packet of condoms. We got to her house, a single room where she shared with two friends. After an introduction, her friends started leaving one by one with excuses that ranged from

‘I am going to visit my boyfriend’ and ‘I am going to blow-dry my hair.’
I grinned when the two excused themselves to leave us because that script was drafted during the men’s conference of 2011 by Bro. Ocholla and Mollis. The draft read,

‘If you have roommates and a brother brings his girl over. One by one, leave the room in intervals until the brother remains alone in the house with the girl.’ I was glad that the draft was shared with the ladies. Alone, with Mercy in the house, we started kissing and making out

I thanked God because I was finally beating the dryspell spell that my village witches had cast me. I had seen Canan, I thought, what remained was to part the waters and cross into Canaan. However, when I pulled out my stick like Moses to separate the waters of the red sea

before crossing over to Canan, Mercy looked into my eyes, and said, ‘Nanyesha, Sakwah. Not today.’ The red sea was literary red and impenetrable. Canaan remained a distant dream to me as was to Nasa supporters in 2017.

I was disappointed, but hopeful nonetheless after she promised me a repeat attempt to enter Canaan. I traveled back to Nairobi. We kept in touch. She set two weeks after that day as the day when we would have the repeat erections.

‘Interns are not paid, you know that.’ She said when convincing me to send her the fare. I sent 1500 fare from Webuye to Nairobi; 1000 fare and Ksh.500 transit lunch at Nakuru. On Friday morning, I pulled ‘nitakupiga exile this weekend’, on my roommate.

In the evening, he left the room never to return till Sunday in the evening.
Sending fare to a girl in a Nairobi Suburb is nothing compared to sending fare to someone outside Nairobi.

As a man, the moment you send fare to a girl, your mind completely switches off from anything else but fornicating. Imagine thinking about sex as you wait for the girl to travel all the way from Webuye to Nairobi, tormenting.

She was due to travel from Morning and arrive early in the evening. But during mid-morning when I called her to ask if she had left for Nairobi, her phone was off. It was the first time sending fare to a girl, and the voice of ‘the mobile subscriber you are trying to…’

almost sent me into a nervous breakdown. I called again, maybe the network was poor. I called again, she was mtega. Then I called again, and again, and again and again, and again for the fiftieth time, she was mteja. I started guessing where she could be.

At 1 PM, I guessed that she must have been in Nakuru at that time. At three, I guessed she must have been in Naivasha. At 5, I guessed she must have been on the outskirts of Nairobi. So, I went and took a shower, went and bought chicken pieces and sukuma wiki for supper

and a loaf of bread and a packet of milk for breakfast as I waited for her to switch on her phone upon her arrival in Nairobi. There was that possibility that her phone’s battery was as poor as an Itel’s phone, and she might have switched off to save the phone’s power.

I convinced myself. When you are expecting to be laid, all excuses make sense. I swept the floor and spread my bed with clean bedsheets.
True to my imaginations, as I was settling down in the house from the shop, I received, ‘you tried calling me but I was off bla bla bla’

I turned up the music on the Ampex subwoofer that I had borrowed and turned up a small party. It was going down, men. It was going down. She was in Nairobi and we were going to spend the whole weekend together in the famous Hall 9. Two minutes later, she sent me a text message.

‘Hi, Sakwah, I hope you are well. Aki, I am sorry. Something came up in the hospital this morning. It was an emergency. I was forced to cancel the trip and rush to the hospital for the weekend. You just know hospitals and emergencies. I will come over next weekend.’

To cut the short story long, I sent her fare the following weekend, she ate it mercilessly. A month later, I snooped on Mike's phone and read his chat with Mercy. One text read, ' Sakwah hajapata kakitu nimdanganye nakujia game?' I confronted her, she blocked me.

I wondered why she had blocked me when she had a chance to eat more and more of my fare, because, boy, the smell of sex used to turn me into a gullible dummy.
Recently, a girl asked me to sent her fare.

I replied, ‘enda upande mat, ukiitishwa fare, nipee number ya donda nimtumie through M-pesa!’ At an age where fare can be paid through M-pesa, usikubali kuliwa fare. Eating fare more than once from the same man should be declared an economic crime against the boychild.