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Showing posts from December, 2024

Stories from the banking hall

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  People out here are angry, really angry. I know this is no way to start a story, but relax it's heading somewhere, I promise. It's a chilly morning and I'm at a bank waiting for my turn to be served, service yao ilikuwa imeanza kusumbua from Monday, but hey, that's a story for another time. I could feel like I was a bit out of place, you know? because the last time I remember I was in a bank was many years ago, when I was on campus, paying for my fees. Mzazi aliniamia bana, alijua ningepata guts, temptations za kukula fee ingekam, ningejua venye ningeilipa. So where was I?  Oh yes, there is this guy who is seated like 2 or three seats away from me, bigger and older than me from the looks of it, looks like a business man, or in lay man terms jamaa wa madeals. After a few minutes waiting, he starts getting impatient, and frustrated so he starts complaining, why is the service taking so long, can't they go a little faster, and so on and so forth.  I'm seated ther...

Late night drama.

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Nataka niseme hii story initoke.  Yesterday, I was coming from a candle lighting occasion held at one of the estates along Mombasa road. The candle lighting was for one of my Gs who had rested on Saturday late at night. The news had hit me hard on Sunday morning, like a sledgehammer impact on a surface when I got to know. I am in the company of three people. One friend called Mulla, who writes spectacular articles touching on creatives, and two acquaintances. We had just arrived in town, and it looked like it had rained before. As we are all heading in the same direction, we decide to go board the same matatu, Super metro, at archives.  The matatu fills up pretty quickly, considering it's almost one am at night, and it's so damn cold. Funny thing, the conductor I can't see him. Where is he disappearing off to when the matatu is full? I can sense the growing frustration among other passengers who are also wondering, where has he gone off to?  As we all wait for the conduct...

Chaos and Mogoka.

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You may or may not believe it, but I used to work in one of the big bus companies for long distance travel in Kenya as a conductor. The two drivers I used to work with, one was called Nduki Moto Makopolo and the other driver was Kata Funua Macharia and our route was from Meru to Mombasa and vice versa. It was a day like any other, but on this particular day, we bought our daily dose of mgox (mgox is what we used to call Mogoka) from the wrong guy. Huyu alikuwa anakaa elchapo flani sababu he would tell us tunaweza hata nusa hio mgox na stimu zitapanda.  I assumed that perhaps, it was the normal salesman hype lakini  WUEH! By 1900 hrs tulikuwa Embu. After kuchukua abiria wa Embu, safari ikaanza fiti, tukasema sherehe ianze. Our cockpit was one of its kind, sema kaportable mid speaker with bass abilities, madere wanaelewa. We switched off the passenger’s speakers and the one that was left was our “mziki” speaker. Nduki Moto had this flash disk that had everything hadi national an...