Mathiokora edition.

At times I cast my eyes westward, towards my ancestral home and wish that my mother comes down from the land of ugali, chicken and bullfighting and swing her iron hand at all these delinquents.

She is no Margaret Thatcher, but I swear upon my grand father’s walking stick that she can discipline any and all of these manner less people walking around in Nairobi.

I am actually tired of the people who dot alleys with mosaics from their insides. What kind of man or woman squats in the middle of a dark alley in the city and lets rip what he ate for supper!

I swear, if this was in my village, such a social misfit would have lost one of his buttocks, preferably his left one, to a wild T9, which is in effect a starving rabid dog! That would have been the better option, the other being that the owner of the piece of land on which you desecrate, casts a spell on a sample of whatever you have deposited. The rest as they say is history. You will be forced to proclaim your sin to the whole village at a special public baraza, or else your ears will forever remain deaf to the long calls of nature.

And this children of god who are in the business of preserving their livers in flammable liquids. The official pass time for Nairobians is no longer binge drinking, it is more of beat drinking. You consume your drink until it beats you or someone beats you to a pulp. My mother would never let them escape with this.

Simply, she would refer you to my grand mother who would in very few acts of subtle aggression make you regret your actions.

One day, according to my uncles, my dad wobbled into the homestead, drunk from some funny ceremony that he had not been granted permission to attend. Seeing that he was very bubbly and the function was yet to end, my grand mother actually gave him express permission to attend the rest of it.

My father, in a drunken stupor, hurried to the river, washed his shoeless feet, changed into his special white calico shirt and shot off into the dusk towards the drum beats and vibrations from the feet of dancing village girls.

He returned at dawn. A few minutes later, he was dispatched to the village market, 17kms away, to sell three cockerels and take the money to his aunt, several kilometers further. All this distance was covered on foot and under the hot sun.

He never drunk again…till he moved into the city. This is the kind of hard-line discipline required in today’s world.

Often, I meet very beautiful women, dragging along old wrinkled white men who look like they have forgotten their IV tubes in Kamau’s Taxi(he obviously sells them to a doctor in Kayole) onto dance floors.

I am not sorry to say that I find this in bad taste. It can not be justified. I do not however blame them for this drastic action. Desperate times call for strange measures. Maybe we are letting our women down. For a long time, the average Nairobi man has thought a night out spent grinding against your date on a sweat covered dance floor, is romance enough to warrant submission on all other fronts from her.

When I was growing up, any acts of disrespect towards my sisters was looked upon as a personal affront towards all the women of the world. After which a harsh lecture followed, then the thrashing, delivered to a soft bottom by a stiff hand via a Sandak sandal. Ever since, I have learnt to respect women.