I was riffling through my old things the other weekend: Secondary school note books, undergraduate files and somewhere in my notebook for PhiChemBi(pronounced FI-KEM-BA): Physics, Chemistry, Biology), I came across a truerelic from the past: a love letter I'd written to supposed to have loved The letter in question is not an ordinary letter.It was the first letter I'dever written to any girl.It was also written in particular style. Assecondary school students, we had our own way of doing things. Being newly introduced to the mysteries of science and agriculture,invariably felt thata love letter was a good means of showing off our skills. Every love letterwas scrutinised by one's circle of peers. For the writing of this particular letter, I had no fewer than 10 advisers. The letter kept going back andforth with each person, adding his own line. Our objective was simple: thatthe girl to whom it was addressed should fall head over heels in love. We had high hopes that a letter would do the trick. You probably also oncewrote such a letter. Here, this is the beginning of my first love letter: anemotionaldisconnection from reality, a question mark??? As follows:

At school, July 10, 1986

My dearest, sweetest,fondest,fantastic,extra-ordinary, paragon of beauty a.k.a Lizzy. I hopethis letter meets you in a fabulous state of metabolism, if so doxology. Myprincipal aim of writing this letter to you is to gravitate your mind towards a matter of global and universal importance, which has beentroubling my soul.The matter is so important. Even as I am writing,my adrenalin is 100 percent on the Richter scale, my temperature is rising, the wind vane of my mind is pointing North, South and East at the same time; the mirror in myeyes has only your divine image. Indeed when I sleep, you are the one in mymedulla oblongata, and I dream about you. I went out tosea in my dream, and I saw you: surrounded by H20 and you in your majesty rose from the abdomen of the sea like Yemoja, the avatar of beauty. Oh, Lordbe with us! We are thy servants!!! As you can see, I am in a serious dilemmaAnd I want you to take my matter seriously. At this junction, what our Lord said on this matter is germane. He says we should ask, and we shall be givenwe should seek and we will find, and that we should knock, and it will beopened unto us. I am this 10th day of the seventh month in the year of our Lord, one thousand, nine hundred and eighty six, asking, seeking andknocking at your door. My prayer is that thou should open so that thyservant can enter. I want to wake up in the morning and see only your face. I want you to be the only sugar in my tea, the onlyfly in my ointment, the butter on my bread, the grey matter of my system,the oxygen in my head, the planet of my universe, the wall clock of my room.The conveyor belt of my soul. I pray that you realise the gargantuan nature of my predicament. If you refuse, my life will be like tea without sugar,like a snail without shell, a Xmas goat without a horn; in fact I'll becomean orphan. What is life if I can't wake up in the morning and behold your face? You model of pulchritude, patiently created by God on a Sunday morningbefore he went on a deserved holiday.Please Lizzy, let me be your Romeo. Make me the Adam to your Eve.Shakespeare said it all: if music be the food of love, play on. I want to emphasise, universally and responsibly, that you are love itself. You arethe metaphor, oxymoron, thesis, antithesis, irony, gerund, conjunction andthe adverb of love. At this juncture, let me also say that geography of your body is a permanent allelluia. Not from your body, ammonia, urea and iodine-you are too beautiful for that, what I see in your body is milk and honey.At this juncture, brevity is the soul of wit. A stitch in time saves nine. Procrastination is the thief of time.

Ahimbi

The Story Behind the Return

A couple of months ago, I got the ingenious idea of killing off the Ahimbi. A promotion, a salary increase and suddenly I seemed to actually want to WORK. For a moment there, I was actually hooked on the cliché "With Great Power Cometh Great Responsibility" (does the cometh make it sound more official?)

Hence the attempted motor accident tale above... Then fact became stranger than fiction when my old man and me sis did have motor vehicle accident. I therefore decided not to tempt fate and stick to the real Ahimbi. Part Janus, part Heep.

In summary, there was no accident, and I was just taking time out... Not like there was much going on during my time in...

As always, I will give a flash from the past....

The return of the Ahimbi

The Begining...

At first, lying there in a semi conscious state, all I seemed to have was a strange combination of dreams, memories and far off voices from the present day. Unbidden, my mind was taken over; not by the dreams of tomorrow or realities of today... but by the memories of yesterday which now came flooding back. Things I had totally forgotten, things locked away in some vault of total inaccessibility...

Like the warm embrace of sun on my last day in preparatory school and running home with a report card that said I was third in class,

Like my Burundi neighbors when I was a kid and especially Jamila, my first true love - of how I was so intimidated by her I never told her and relied solely on longing eye contact for my success until she eventually ended up with my then best friend Bob "I hope u die" Kahlo....

And the sounds from the past.... Driving in a Lite Ace van listening to songs like "Isn't it Midnight" - Fleetwood Mac, "The Weight of the Wind" - A-ha and "Purple Rain" – Prince; from a little yellow walkman that I and my siblings fought battles over....

Of so long ago and of the past month which to me was just one Letter - D

Dee.... of Dee...

I drifted, I dreamt, I remembered....

The Return - Prologue

It’s been close to 6 months since I last posted on this blog!!! Have I been having the time of my life? Certainly not! Maybe I made a load of money and just couldn't be bothered spending my evenings here.... hmmm Not that again! Then where had I gone of too? What went wrong (or maybe right)?

Well the story begins on a cold Saturday morning. I was taking a morning jog when I got a call from an irate husband who mistook me for some man after his wife.... I was so absent minded trying to argue my innocence I did not see a mathree changing lanes and veering suddenly off the road.....

Whoosh.....

Silence...

A New Year Has..... Come!

Obviously I spent a few extra days of 2007 all hushed up. Just to make sure I truly crossed over the great financial divide that was Xmas 2006… What a season! I wish I could mention something to do with a great church sermon, fantastic Xmas carols or even just a visit to the nearby orphanage to hug some kids but sadly this was one year when I didn’t celebrate the birth of "the one" in any symbolically Christian way. Just drinking booze with a visiting friend and in-law (make that outlaw since all he seemed to want to do is to meet the lovely ladies – the cheek of asking me to hook him up behind me cuz’s back!)

Come to think of it 2006 was not a year to brag about and I have a lot of catching up to do in 2007. Apart from not being close to The One, I am sure even the Architect was unimpressed with my 2006. Therefore, apologies to the Trinity over 2006 and some resolutions for 2007…. No longer will I Persephone... (Hmmm… what’s wrong with this computer, I meant perspire) over what I can not change. I will not Merovingian i.e. rely heavily on vino to get mellow (damn that was a hard one to use) Furthermore I will no longer be a Bane to those whom I suspect of harboring ill will for me (and you are many, yes you are)... I will be the Deux ex Machine of all those in problems (not financial though) hence forth I have Morpheous oops I mean morphed into a changed person. …

2006…. What mistakes (blunders) I made… Like the time I told a girlfriend I would use her as an example to my kids and I quote “When I have grown up kids, I will tell them to be careful and not to land into financial trouble like Aunt Bee” Not knowing by so doing I was revealing she would NEVER be the mother of my kids… *self slap*

For 2007… I have quit smoking (again). I need to get me a new gig… I retire from being a love doctor and attempting to solve all manner of people’s emotional problems…

Et cetera... Ad infinitum.

Which reminds me of a call I got from a friend last year…
She kept talking on and on about her problems until my mind went into semi comatose mode… She must have asked a couple of questions and I guess I was so absent minded I didn’t hear them…
Angrily she asked what I was doing.
I replied, “Sorry. There was something I remembered and my mind switched off for a tiny second”,
“So what was I doing?” she asked. “Providing the soundtrack to your day dreaming?”
“No.” I replied, “You were the background vocals in my mind”

2006! I hope 2007 turns out to be a better year.

A Return to Sanity....

SO I am back in Nairobi…. Not that anyone missed me (running a blog no one views is so much hard work), but I have been on leave for almost a month. To places far and wide (a la Aladdin) … Actually not that far and certainly not that wide!

First I spent a couple of weeks in my house. There is nothing as lousy as discovering, whilst on leave, that you are much happier working than spending all day watching telly and all night…. watching even more telly. All acquaintances are working, all your best ex girlfriends are married, home gets so boring you end up calling your WORKMATES to find out what’s happening in the office… Eventually you spend all day waiting for the evening when you can meet up with the same workmates for a drink and update on the latest office gossip. Net result, you feel like you are in office and back to work and you are happy!

Next I take a quick dash to Kigali and come back through Kampala by bus. I wont regale anybody (oh, I remember no one reads this anyway so there really is nobody) with my adventures a la Kigali or Kampala but let me just mention to all who might ever get this bad idea to travel with a perfumed handkerchief on the busses that ply that route. I explain;

The return journey sets off early morning from Kigali… It sets off well. People dozing off; probably because they had to wake up so early to be on the bus, children suckling on the supple breast casually exposed to all who wish to view (We wish! We view! - I need to learn Latin, this would read much better in that noble language)

Katuna: There is the usual bureaucracy at the borders, the puzzle of immigration officers overly checking foreigners leaving their country! Makes you wonder whether there are some people they don’t let OUT!

First Stop: Kabale; Some hawkers hawk everything from milk, sodas and cakes to ripe bananas. It seems reasonable enough for people to buy since its morning so I get me a soda and other buy all sorts of goodies then we set off….

Next Stop: Mbarara; I guess since this could be early tea break time, its ok for people to go ahead and buy some more of those bananas, meat on skewers, sodas, bottled water, cakes, biscuits…..

Third stop: Road side market at who knows where… More meat, chicken as well, fried bananas, soda, heavens!!! By now this is no road trip to savor. I don’t need a sixth sense to know that the effect of all these different “delicacies” on my neighbors. It is unflattering to say the least. My third sense is beginning to get overwhelmed by the small breezes in the bus. I smell something that can only be chicken with milk and a few minutes later I get a whiff of what might be soda with fired bananas and roasted liver. Eish!!!! At this point my second sense seems to be dull and inactive coz no sounds warn a brother of the incoming “scents”. I bear the 3 hours of crying babies peeing all over their helpless mothers, skewers and polythene flying through the windows and tooth picking to Kampala.

The next day (The story of my night in Kampala is rated PG 13)…. I set off for Nairobi. Different bus, different crowd but same behavoir. Again first stop is in a forest and lo! there is another market here and the whole feast begins again….

The realization I had on this trip is that the East African Community will certainly survive because: -
i) All East Africans devour chicken and meat to the bone or stick
ii) They all can’t smell each others farts. No one but me seemed to notice that the air was foul. And I mean the Sultan of Foulness here.

At least I am back in safe old Nairobi. My cousin is in town from Lagos so it will be nice to know what the latest scandal back there is (and no, it isn’t home). Also I have a wedding to attend today. To me, attending a wedding means going for the reception and not the church ceremony….

Opps… I can see from the time that the church service must be over and its time for the wedding. So off I go!

Salyut!