If there is one in thing Kenyans know best is how to milk a cliche until it is dry like chewing gum that a Nairobian girl sticks under a restaurant table. Especially, the Swahili cliches.
Presently, it “kitaeleweka”.
Previously, it was the various versions, “amejua hajui”…
I remember this fine girl I had who used to say “kuchoka nayo!”…It was at the time when “nayo” was slowly becoming fashionable.
I used to think it was her unique style. A few months after we parted ways, everyone in Nairobi was exclaiming with “Nayo”… It got a bit tired and fizzled out. That was severely years ago.
Nick Salat gave us “Ndani Ndani Ndaaaaani”, that we all embraced with all its sexual connotational glory and man, we pounced on and overused and misused until it died a natural date.
And then there was the “Opening Servers”…How we made light of election rigging and turned it into a sexual cliche still baffles me…”Nifhngulie server”…Phony and annoyingly funny.
Maybe it is my professional that abhors cliches like leprosy and that is why I rarely fancy them and hardly uses them in my writing and conversation.
This is less a complaint as a call for us to be creative from time to time. If you can avoid them, avoid though.
By Silas Nyanchwani
