• Dating a girl with 'Atwoli’s chain on her teeth' leads to reflections on what girls like

With time, you have come to understand something most people are afraid to admit: the universe is indifferent, it doesn’t care about your stupid little plans. The universe has its own plans. And it doesn’t give a hoot about your opinion. After all, it was here first.

But you are a rebel, a goon. The kind of a goon who would want to die on a beach, looking at the ocean, while holding a bottle of decades-old whiskey. Basking in the spirit of the creator and giving zero chills about the universe. You defy the universe, or so you like to think. You forge your own path and follow it, wherever that path will lead you.

Once, it led you to your first-ever girlfriend, back in the first year of campus. Oh, how you thought you two were in love. She had these locks you wanted to harvest and take to your ancestors as a libation. And she wore braces. Before then, you had never seen a girl in braces, scratch that, you’d never seen anyone in braces.

Hell, you thought she had Atwoli’s chain on her teeth. And when you couldn’t stop telling her about Min Jii, your mother, she smiled at you, revealing shiny silver braces hugging her perfectly set teeth, and said, “A guy who loves his mum, that’s hot.” You knew then that she was the one, even though when it comes to Min Jii, love is just part of it, the rest is pure fear of her very being.

Either it is the path that was wrong or the destination. But only a few months in with your ‘chained-teeth’ damsel and it was clear the only place this relationship would go was south. And it did go south. One would even say southeast of south, especially after you called her a chain-tooth leech when she demanded a share of your Helb millions.

The next path you forged led you here, in this mat, sweltering in the heat of over 40 sweaty humans stuck in the eternal Hail Selassie Avenue jam. The only redeeming quality of your current state is the yellow-thighed mummy occupying the seat next to you. Well, this is what being a creative looks like, which, quite frankly, the 20-year-old you who made the decision to drop everything you had sat in class for and become a creative did not foresee.

Now that you are a tad older, you see things more clearly. You see why it was naïve of you to imagine creativity as glamorous. After all, Da Vinci was a genius creative, and yet he only received worldwide fame after his death. Hemmingway was a sad and miserable man, who only drunk as much as he wrote, which is a lot. And yet you are not even half as smart as you thought you were. This city has taught you that. In campus, everyone sang your praises, said your penmanship was the real OG. What did they call you? Bikozulu?

Here, face to face with the ‘real’ creatives; people who can write the very essence of life into being, people who paint the wind and shoot the birds out of the sky with their art. Here with these creatives, you could as well be a pawpaw tree and you still wouldn’t be any dumber.

One of these hotshot creatives is this skinny dude with a bubbly head called Brian Khavalaji. He loves it when people spell his name as ‘Coverlargy’. But you spell it as Khavalaji, if for nothing else but to spite him. And also because his ancestors came from some forest in Congo, so he has no business having an English surname. Before you met him, you could have sworn on your father’s beard that Luhya people are genetically incapable of eating ugali with a spoon. And yet Brian, who professes a direct descendence from Jehova Wanyonyi, shamelessly picks ugali with a fork like he is suddenly from LA and not Namakhokho.

He is brilliant, this guy. And the only Gen Z you know, who when you visit, doesn’t order in but folds his sleeve and cooks a goddamn meal. In fact, you should have dedicated this column today to solely talk about his culinary skills. But then you had to first write 500 words about yourself because you are a narcissistic son of a … well, son of Diana B. You like saying I, imposing yourself upon other people. One would even say you are an egomaniac.  

But which egomaniac would be here, saying how much of a creative genius he thinks someone else is? Brian is not just creative, he is perhaps one of the few Gen Z out here who act like they’ve got their sh*t together. And you say act because, quite frankly, no one in their 20s actually has it together. We are all just chaos made into flesh.

Well, you’ve decided that the 20-something year–old mess that you are is going to start ‘acting’ cool and collected. Like Curves (that’s what Brian forces people to call him, the bastard!). You are going to learn how to cook because if there is something people should learn in their 20s, it is how to cook real food. A guy who can cook? You would be the ladies' catch. I mean you are already a catch, but who doesn’t want to be caught some more.

Even better, when you can finally cook, you’ll stop asking ladies that lame-ass question/pick-up line of, “When are you cooking for me?” and instead ask more poignant stuff like, “How is the morning a promise for a new day? When it is morning, it’s already a new day, how does it become a promise again?”

Advertise with us: Call 0711 046 000 · [email protected]