By Tongola Mate via fb
11:23pm area code South C
Am forced to reduce the volume of my stereo. Damian Jr. Gong Marley has been on loop since I switched on my Uber App.
“Sometimes it gets so lonely that I can hear birds chirping inside my chest…” My first client announces looking straight into my eyes.
She had been on phone for a while before entering my Honda Fit. I didn’t know how to react. I ended up looking at her chest, maybe to see if I could see a bird’s nest…
Women can get emotional. But one thing I admire about the female mammals, they open up to anyone who cares to listen. They don’t have that valve to bolt up like their male counterparts. Maybe that is why they glow.
She explains that she just discovered that the man she has been seeing and almost moving in with has a family in Uthiru. 4 kids.
They have been in several dates. Countless escapades. Watched the sun set in Manda island, Lamu, flew in a fire balloon in the Mara, had dinner at the Moorings floating restaurant in Mtwapa…
She reveals all these while balancing her tears. She looks frail.
‘BUT WHY?’ I ask my inner soul in capital letters.
Why would one want to hurt such a naive soul.
She goes to her gallery and shows me a picture of them at Art Café, Capital center.
It was taken an hour ago. They looked happy. Happier than the look my daughter plants on her face when I give her permission to wash her doll.
They guy had met her up to break the news. They were headed nowhere.
I adjusted the volume of my stereo. ‘Affairs of the heart …..playing in volume 5. She went mute. I could hear the birds she was talking about chirping in her chest.
“Who sang that song?” She asked.
“Damian Jr Gong. Son to the late Bob Marley”, I replied.
I dropped her at Nairobi West and she thanked me for listening to her. I also thanked her in advance for listening to me tomorrow on Reggae Splash. I promised to play her ‘Affairs of the heart’.
She handed me her business card and vamoosed.
Naomi (not her real name) a SSG at the Moi Airbase.
She looked young and naive, didn’t know this damsel could fly a war plane to Somalia and back.
And then some male species could afford to break her down and get birds chirping in her bonnet!
‘Simba ni mkali lakini hutungwa mimba’ I remembered the old adage.
