*Disclaimer. All names used in this dossier are fictional and do not depict any living or dead persons. Parental Advisory. Material may contain adult themes and abusive language.
*Please read part I of the blog (choose from the menu) if you haven’t already done so that you may get the gist of the story.
Ja London, I know that I have been telling you that part II of the Bajuni story is coming. Without further ado, here goes…
Mapenzi ni kikohozi, hayawezi kufichika. (Love is like a cough, it cannot be hidden). I was love-struck! The Bajuni belle was driving me crazy and I, too, was driving her crazy. It was puppy love! When we met and embraced, I always caught the whiff of her Bint El Sudan perfume. She confided to me that there was a way of applying the Bint El Sudan perfume sparingly without alerting the whole neighborhood of your presence. ‘We (the Bajuni women) don’t douse ourselves with the whole bottle like the Somali women’, she schooled me. That Bint El Sudan scent has stuck to me up to this day, its distinctive smell getting me to turn my head as I always did when I met the Bajuni lady. Our ritual daily meetings were intensely fantabulous! The Bajuni brought me ‘maji ya madafu, (coconut milk) biriani, mahamri (doughnut made with coconut milk and cardamom), coconut rice, fish fried in coconut oil and so on and so forth. I was going coconuts with this new indulgence in coconut infused dishes which I zestfully masticated! I was in love with the coco…nut. The people from the coast have maximized the use of the coconut. From making roofs using makuti (coconut palm fronds) to brewing mnazi, (palm wine from the coconut tree) the coconut is king! She assured me that she had made the dishes herself. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, said some gray-haired canny men long time ago! Get to my heart she did. These dishes, while popular at the Kenyan coast, were rather rare in the upcountry and could only be found in homes domiciled by coastal people or at restaurants that prepared coastal themed foods. There was a popular eatery serving coastal themed foods called Malindi Dishes on Gaberone road in Nairobi, where my late grandfather used to take me after I had aced a tough national exam or two! I gobbled up the meals made by her and licked my fingers, esurient after enduring pangs of hunger for most of the day!
After a while, I started feeling guilty about accepting her food. This is because, I felt that it was my moral duty to reciprocate and bring her some of the dishes we ate and prepared at home. At this juncture, I know that I shall be labeled a traitor and a person who doesn’t appreciate their own culture. However, I have to say this. I come flom the sropes, sorry, I come from the slopes, the central part of Kenya and our traditional food is wanting in many respects! Our diet is limited to maize, beans, ugali, (maize meal, corn meal) sukuma wiki, (kale) potatoes and once in a while, when there is a special occasion, meat and chapati. Thazo! (That’s all!) No wonder the people from the Lakeside call us ‘Jorabuon’! (people of potatoes) That’s all we eat. We also have arrowroots and yams and other tubers but our diet is limited! We used to hear of this joke that sometimes you can eat so much githeri (meal made of maize and beans) that the grains actually start sprouting and growing in your stomach, ‘mpaka githeri inamea kwa tumbo’. Also, this food is heated for such a long time that it changes its chemical composition! It turns from identifiable vegetables to a type of bland gruel, the type of gruel that Oliver Twist got into trouble for when he asked the rotund and niggard Mr. Bumble ‘please sir, I want some more’! You wouldn’t want more of this gruel, unless several cubes of Royco spices were added to it. For those of you who were lazing around in shopping centers and malls instead of attending literature classes in high school, Oliver Twist is the name of a popular English book penned by Charles Dickens. This is the book that inspired D’Banj, the Nigerian crooner to write the song ‘Oliver Twist’ that you know and skelewu (dance) to. So, I coyly told the Bajuni that I would make her a meal but she playfully reminded me about the githeri joke. ‘Bring me githeri but put some meat and Royco (spice) in it’ she chuckled!
Oti the ‘ambassador’ advised me to take the Bajuni maiden to a movie in ‘Babylon’, at the Sarit Center Fox Cineplex in Westlands. I would be in total control for a whole lot of reasons. One, she would be in a place unfamiliar to her and would trust my instincts as we moved around the place. Secondly, there would be very little competition from both the ghetto yute and the dwellers of Babylon. Oti correctly reasoned that, ghetto yute rarely went to ‘Babylon’ unless it was absolutely necessary. Babylon was out of their reach literally and figuratively. They would stick out like a sore thumb in the leafy suburban impenetrable fortresses that had the signs ‘Mbwa Kali’ (beware of fierce dog) emblazoned on the steel gates. It was also too expensive and their few shillings would not make it in the pricey suburbs. Conversely, the Babylon dwellers would be unwilling to take on a lass that was unfamiliar to them. I would effectively be captaining the ship and there would be no ‘hungryman’ as Oti used to call members of Team Mafisi! (skirt chasers)
I followed Oti’s advice with resounding success! Oti told me that, prior to going into the movie theater, I had to take the Bajuni to eat at the adjoining Westlands market. He warned me that, the popcorn and soda and hotdogs at the Sarit Center Fox Cineplex cost an arm and a leg, as much as the monthly salary of some house-girl marooned in the boondocks! Those guys in the mall must use fans to blow the aromatic fumes of chips (we call fries ‘chips’ in Kenya although we have began calling them fries, just like the Americans) popcorn and cake. They have learnt from their counterparts in Las Vegas, who pump pure oxygen in the casinos to keep you awake for hours on end and gambling for days on end. A bead of sweat always ran down his brow as he harkened back to a trip to the Cineplex, with a manzi wa (gal of) Nairobi that cost him a king’s ransom as he made the fatal mistake of not feeding the ravenous goldilocks before the movie. When they reached Sarit Center, the smells of ‘fish and chips’ wafted through the corridors of the mall and the hungry lass decided that they should grab a bite at the food court before the movie. Oti, being the perfect gentleman, said yes without batting an eyelid and ordered for the two of them.
Once they were done eating, they proceeded to the cinema room where more aromas were wafting. It was the popcorn popping and enticing the cinema-goers with its buttery smell! At her behest, he bought two bags of popcorn and two sodas and they proceeded to watch the movie. When they were done watching the movie which Oti watched disgustingly as he remembered the princely sum he had spent two or so hours ago, they proceeded to the bus stop to catch a ‘mathree’ or ‘matatu’, which is what we call our minibuses in Nairobi. He was exasperated by the copious amounts of money he had spent in ‘Babylon’ and needed to get out of there quickly! Before they exited the mall, some more aromas wafted through! They were from a bakery! If you don’t know this already, Nairobi ladies are obsessed with cake. I don’t know why! You can buy an entire kuku porno (rotisserie chicken) from Kenchic and have no reaction whatsoever, but cake takes the cake in Nairobi. When they see a bakery or confectionery, they behave like Marie Antoinette and metaphorically shout ‘let them eat cake!’ No wonder that queen faced the guillotine! There is a cake called ‘Black Forest’ that is sold at almost twice the amount of other cakes! Funny enough, the ladies in Nairobi bypass all the samplings of other less expensive cakes and set their sights on the black forest! Not carrot cake, not gingerbread cake, black forest. The bakers and confectioners have learnt this and cash in on these black forest cravings with deadly accuracy. Ka-Ching! Kenyan ladies in the U.S have ‘imported’ their like of expensive slices of cake and usually request for a cake called ‘Tiramisu’. For those of you in the body washing careers, you have to scrub several cadavers at work to be able to afford but a slice of this tiramisu cake! When a damsel asks for servings of tiramisu, you need to check how much money is in your flailing bank account lest it dips into the red! Oti bought a slice or two of black forest! The gal innocuously asked him why he was not having a piece but he said that he was allergic to eggs. She then requested for cappuccino to ‘teremsha’ the black forest, to ease it down her esophagus! If you think cappuccino is expensive in New York, then you have never bought cappuccino in Nairobi. Oti’s pupils were dilated after he was presented with the bill. Oti said that, for the first time in a while, he pulled money from his socks that he would place there in case of an emergency! The emergency he had envisaged was the kind where some mean faced yute cornered you in a dark alley and relieved you of your valuables. Not paying for overpriced popcorn, cakes and cappuccinos! He was essentially being robbed in broad daylight! The barista who had churned the cappuccino gave him a pitiful look and unwillingly took the crumpled note. He understood the pain Oti was going through. Black forest and cappuccino had presented an emergency! ‘Huyo manzi alinitoanisha, sijui kama alikuwa na minyoo kwa tumbo! Nililia kwa choo boss’, (The girl ripped me off, I don’t know whether she had worms in her stomach! I cried in the toilet boss) Oti ruefully remembered that day that would live in infamy. Oti swore never to buy cake! Ever!
Oh yes, I took the Bajuni lass to Westlands market, bought some ‘chapati karanga’ (chapati naan with beef stew) and once we were done, bought a bowl of fruit salad, which Oti said was important to keep the lady full till the movie was over. Oti also warned me not to take her to a love story movie. He firmly stated that you just couldn’t compete with the buffed up sweet-talking lads on screen who seemingly said and did all the right things. These men who grace the big screen also grace the covers of ‘People Magazine’ having been voted the sexiest men alive, the Will Smiths and the Tyrese Gibsons and the Mathew McConaugheys. ‘Take her for an action movie, where the sounds shall be coming from everywhere at the iMax’ he recommended. He was right; both of us thoroughly enjoyed the action-packed movie as the surround sounds shocked the living daylights out of us, prompting us to set up another date. Wanting to avoid the pitfalls of buying a slice or two of black forest, I used a longer exit, away from the aromatics of the bakery, lest I am held at ransom by the dreaded black forest cake! This time, for the next date, I needed to save a bit of money. Oti told me to take her to the Carnivore restaurant for lunch and once the meal was over, I would leave hurriedly to avoid unnecessary expenses. The Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi is one of the top 50 restaurants in the world and would put to shame all of the fogo de chão restaurants that I have dined in here in the U.S. They serve regular meats, but their world renowned game-meat is an experience unlike any other! Crocodile, ostrich and other tasty exotic morsels are roasted on traditional Maasai swords over a huge, spectacular charcoal pit that dominates the entrance of the restaurant. Taking a lady or anyone for that matter for dinner at the Carnivore was financial suicide, as prices rose sky high during dinner time. Also, there was the tendency to keep ordering more food and more drinks since it was an evening and there was no rush. A date at the Carnivore had to be wrapped up quickly. He also proposed that I ‘help’ the lady out and recommend ‘rabbit and chips’ to her as I proceeded to order the same, courtesy of our waiter who had been tipped ahead of time. He laughed his usual hearty laugh and confided to me that this is a ‘trick’ he had been taught by a friend of his who worked in the restaurant. Very few people have had rabbit meat. It’s very tasty and the person who eats rabbit meat shall remember the event, you included, for a while. You had to pull some strings to get the ‘rabbit and chips’ discounted special. You had to buy the Carnivore worker a cold one or two on a bustling Friday night in Zanze bar in Nairobi. Once you had agreed to those conditions, the date was set. I borrowed a jalopy from a disgruntled relative, prayed fervently that it would not break down along Lang’ata road and added to the gas tank, petrol (or gas) that moved the fuel indicator needle just above the letter or level ‘E’. Wahome Mutahi, the respected writer called ‘Whispers, Son of the Soil’, who used to pen the addictive article on the Kenyan Sunday Nation used to joke that ‘E’ meant ‘Enough’, not ‘Empty’! I then drove the excited but inquisitive Bajuni to the Carnivore. I had picked up the lady a couple of blocks from where she lived so as not to arouse suspicion. Lunch, consisting of rabbit and chips, was served and a surprise sundae, courtesy of the chef was given to the lady. I was later asked to add another cold one to the itinerary of the Carnivore worker as the sundae was pricey and a few strings had to be pulled to pull this off. I did not mind as I knew the price of that sundae sans the ’employee discount’ and I was only too happy to pay for the whole experience that way. I was grateful to the brothers who had helped me out and got me to catch a glimpse, a whiff of how the people from Babylon wined and dined. Two different worlds I assure you.
The Bajuni belle was quite surprised and impressed that I had pulled a move like that despite my symbiotic relationship with penury. She was only too glad to reciprocate and she promptly invited me for a religious and family celebration called ‘Maulidi’. These Maulidi celebrations take place in Lamu, at the Kenyan coast (and other places of course) to celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammed. They involve praying, feasting, merrymaking and dancing. Since the Bajuni family could not make it to Lamu, they were replicating the celebration hundreds of miles away in Nairobi. She firmly issued a list of instructions I was to follow in order to come for the celebrations. I was to dress in a kanzu (white robe/tunic with a tassel worn mostly by Muslim men in Kenya) and cap to enter their homestead and blend in as one of the family friends. I was to pretend that I did not know who she was and not have any eye contact with her. Now, I had never owned a kanzu and cap and I really didn’t know where to get one. I reiterated my concerns to Oti, who once again came to the rescue and promised to lend me his kanzu and cap. He wistfully reminded me that it was just one of the accessories needed in the exhilarating chase of the skirt. ‘You need to get yourself a permanent set’ Oti guffawed! Yes, Oti was that good. He was the master!
With my freshly laundered, pressed and slightly ill-fitting kanzu and cap, I made my way to the Bajuni household. I took my shoes off at the door as did everyone else. I had been given instructions on how to blend in but immediately I got into the sitting room, (as Kenyans refer to the living room) everybody knew that I was an outsider. My kanzu and cap did nothing to hide the fact that I was ‘mtu wa bara’ as the coastal people called people from upcountry, or people who were not from the coast. One of the Bajuni belle’s brothers had been sworn to secrecy and informed to calmly say that I was his friend who he played soccer with and I was just visiting to check out the festivities. Once he had reeled off this white lie, I was welcomed into the fold. As dusk approached, there was the recitation of some verses from the Koran in prayer form with everyone laying prostrate on the ground. As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do; I also lay prostrate on the ground and mumbled some of what I heard to blend in! After the prayers, it was time to dine. Wow! You should have seen the smorgasbord of mouth-watering dishes on display! These dishes were spectacular! From biriani to chapati, from coconut fish to coconut rice, all the dishes that she had brought to me in morsel form were there in large quantities, the full monty, the whole nine yards! I was taught to eat whilst seating on the floor with my legs folded and I fit right in. After the dining was over, the dancing began!
The dancing, oh the dancing. The men sat separately from the women and the women excused themselves for a change of clothing. They came back wearing flowery bui buis (burkas) and lessos (large pieces of cloth that have printed beautiful sayings in Kiswahili and are largely worn by women around the waist and torso) tied to their derrières! They also showed off their newly applied henna on their hands and arms. The master of ceremonies chose some taarabu (taarab) music and pressed play! The ladies started dancing slowly to the beats of the taarabu music and then the pace of the music quickened! So did they. They started shaking their backsides in amazing fashion! Now, some of you may have watched Nicki Minaj ‘twerk’ on her video ‘Anaconda’ and think that she is killing it. Sorry, it is incomparable. The American ‘twerkers’ have nothing on the Kenyan coastal women! These Kenyan women shake it faster than a Polaroid picture! They shake it fast, watch themselves and mystically show you what they are working with! They were not only shaking it but they were also articulating their hips ‘kutingiza kiuno’ and swaying snake-like, way better than the Arabian belly dancers! They danced rapturously until the whole room was filled with an electric symphony as the ladies danced and hypnotized the dazzled men, putting them into a trance-like situation! Just like the dance scene in the movie ‘The Matrix’. The men clapped in unison and watched and once in a while, there were ululations as the music and dancing reached a crescendo! I broke the rules of engagement and stole a glance or two of my Bajuni belle, who was also stealing glances of me as I watched the spectacle in sheer amazement, like a deer caught in the headlights! When we met the next day, she giggled about it! She told me that she had told her sisters about me and after they exchanged knowing looks, they had given her a tacit seal of approval!
It was now an open secret that the Bajuni maiden and I were officially an item. It was the proverbial love brewed in an African pot. We went everywhere together but sometimes, we had to throw off the hounds by changing plans, meeting in sequestered places, jaunts to the Splash Waterworld next to The Carnivore restaurant amongst other places and shortening meetings. It was like the movies where spies from enemy countries love each other, like the movie ‘From Russia With Love’! Covert operations spiced the thrill and I had learned to blend in so as to increase the frequency of our meetings. After eating biriani from her or githeri from myself, we would whisper sweet nothings to each other. I actually became a good friend of her brother, who was the perfect panacea to the problem of having an unaccompanied male in the Bajuni household. She also came to visit me at home. She would usually come with a cache of clothes in a bag. This was when I was usually washing my weekly heap of clothes whilst listening to the legendary Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) radio presenter Jeff Mwangemi play reggae as he shook his imaginary dreadlocks. When this disc jockey spun his discs, you were immediately transported to Trenchtown in Kingston, Jamaica or in South Africa when Lucky Dube hit the speakers. He had his signature announcement ‘po po po’! The chunes from this selekta eased the onerous chore of washing clothes. If you remember back in ‘mtaa’, the neighborhoods, washing clothes was no mean feat. It involved water, which would sometimes ‘disappear’ from the taps due to chronic shortages. There was also the sitting down on a stool and methodically scrubbing and rubbing each and every shirt, pair of trousers, bedsheets and so on and so forth. The people in the diaspora really have it easy. They place their clothes in a washing machine, choose an option like ‘warm-cold’ or ‘comforter’, press start and voila, the washing machine spins the clothes clean! Just like that. In Kenya, it wasn’t just like that. Washing clothes was a back-breaking exercise that involved collecting water, soaking, scrubbing and rinsing. When you had heavy blankets to wash, a chore my relatives loved delegating to me, you would put them in a ‘karai’, basin and stomp the blankets with your feet like you were stomping under the guidance of Kirk Franklin! ‘My brother can’t you see I got the victory. STOMP!’
When one was done, you had to hang out the clothes to dry, unlike in the diaspora where the dryer has options like ‘permanent press’ or ‘cotton’. In Kenya, outside of Babylon of course, there was no permanent press or cotton or wrinkle free option. The clothes dried one way and one way only; the sun. We dreaded the rainy or cold season as the clothes took too long to dry or didn’t dry at all. Since my Bajuni belle was the youngest in her family, she was usually stuck with the chore of washing clothes and she hated it. This is where I came in, to wash some of her clothes, to ease her immeasurable suffering. So, I washed her clothes. In the beginning, she brought a small pouch. After a while, the pouch was replaced by a small bag and soon, a huge bag replaced the small one! As the Kenyan group Sauti Sol sings in their hit song ‘Sura Yako’, ‘nilikuwa nimekaliwa chapati’, I was ‘whipped’, cast under her spell. Sometimes I wondered whether my friends were right about the jinn from the coast; was I under the spell of jinn? These coastal jinn were/are no joke. After the bloody 2007 elections in Kenya, ruffians and urchins at the coast in Mombasa looted the stores in the Coast and made off with food, electronic equipment and other coveted items. There were pleas from politicians, Muslim Imams and Sheikhs, Christian clergymen and community elders for the looters to stop looting and return all looted merchandise. The pleas fell on deaf ears. Suddenly, an ominous warning was issued: Anyone who had stolen items would be unable to defecate! They would not defecate until all items were returned. A twenty four hour ultimatum was issued and if you as a looter defied the ultimatum, spells from the jinn would engulf your household and you would not defecate! The looters took the warnings seriously and heard the warnings as an augury of death and destruction! All looted items were returned in pristine condition! The people there had, and still have an insuperable fear of jinn!
I had to be covert about how I dried the clothes, as I did not want anyone in our household to know that I was washing my girl’s clothes. In fact, one day, she forgot (according to her) her ng*tha in the pile of clothes that she had brought me to wash for her. After I washed it, I hanged it underneath a towel to conceal it from prying eyes. But as fate would have it, a dastardly wind blew and exposed the lacy red lingerie! I rushed out and took the ng*tha from the clothesline and stashed it inside the house. I thought that I had kept it a tight secret but years later, they divulged to me that they knew all along that I had been washing clothes for her. The black bui buis, and a certain red underwear were a dead giveaway, they quipped! Once the clothes were dry, I dutifully ironed them. One day, she came with her usual bag of clothes but had some other contents in her plastic bag. I inquired as to what the contents were and she pulled out two bottles, one containing shampoo and the other conditioner. “I want you to wash my hair. I don’t have time to go to the salon.” With a quizzical expression on my face, I let her know that I had never washed hair before. “There’s always a first time.” I was tongue tied! Should I refuse as a matter of principle? Did I look like a hairdresser? I was pondering about the decision when she told me that if I didn’t want to do it, then it was perfectly fine. However, the way she said it did not sound like she was going to be fine with the decision if I declined. I decided to lose the battle in order to win the war. Oti had drilled this into me. It is not about the battle, it is about the war. “Should I wash it with cold or warm water?” I asked. ‘Warm water’, she helpfully added. I washed her hair with shampoo and later on with conditioner, massaged her scalp while washing the hair and she remarked that I was very good at it. Henceforward I was going to be her hairdresser, she shrieked! The better part of my weekends would be spent washing clothes and performing what is known as ‘wash and set’! She had me under lock and key and had thrown away the key. I know; the things we do for love…
My interactions with her were seamless. There were no murmurs of disapproval from anyone in the know. I realized that it was partly due to the fact that no one knew how to treat or react to a person from the Bajuni community. You see, Kenyans have a tendency of placing you in a box when they ‘discover’ your ethnicity, sometimes in a positive sense but sometimes in a negative sense. Kikuyus are hardworking (positive) or thieves. (negative) Luos are a learned and assertive people (positive) or proud and prudish. (negative) However, what attributes could you place on a Bajuni? Therefore, people really had nothing negative to say and this meant that I had a clean slate on inter-tribal relations! Apart from being in line as the first non Bajuni to consummate relations with a Bajuni, there was pressure from all quarters! Oti would sarcastically tell me that I had been unable to conquer the mountain-top, climb to the summit. Even the females I knew were surprisingly asserting that ‘nimesleki’, I had refused to strike when the iron is hot. Like Tevin Campbell, I was ready. Like R Kelly, it seemed like she was ready, or was she? Like Ken Wa Maria, I wanted her things to be my things and my things to be her things, the fundamentals! Ken Wa Maria should go back to the studio and make another song! This man is a lyrical genius! I have discovered that, wooing a woman is more like starting a quail egg business. You have to do it quickly. If you ‘lalia maskio’ (sleep on your ears) and fail to make hay while the sun shines, there shall be too much competition and the business shall fail! The sun does not wait for the king, our sagacious elders homed! I needed to Know her. I was under immense pressure, like Uhuru’s government being under pressure to unleash the laptops they promised to primary school children or to complete the LAPSSET project from Lamu to Ethiopia and the highway to Ethiopia and South Sudan. I guess this project shall make it easier for our present and future Kenyan yute to get to Ethiopia to woo these Habesha mermaids away from Addis! The pressure was mounting.
However, there was one problem.
You see, the Bajuni belle was a adherent of the Mohammedan faith. She prays 5 times a day and faces Mecca. Also, if you love the amazing products of Farmers Choice sausages, you are out of luck! Pork is ‘haram’ and forbidden in Islam. She told me that for me to get to know her better, I would have to look into the possibility of converting into Islam! Con-what, I asked her? ‘Convert’, she repeated. She said that, I had to switch from the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the religion of Ibrahim, Ishaq and Yakub! From the God of Noah, Jonah and Jesus to the God of Noah, Jonah and Jesus! Eish! Weren’t these the same guys, I wondered? I mean, wasn’t it the same God? So, what was the problem? I mean, if you go to a mosque and worship that God on Friday and I worship the same God on Sunday, kwani kuna nini? (What’s the problem?)
I was ready to quit eating pork, or ‘mbuzi ulaya’ as it is referred to at the Kenyan coast and forget my regular dosage of spare ribs. I was prepared to get a permanent kanzu and cap. I would continue donating some of the little I had to the poor; I was even ready to lay prostrate on the ground whilst praying. My Bible says that you can pray while prostrate. However, I could not reconcile myself to facing my staunchly Christian mother and telling her that I had abandoned the Almighty Yahweh of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego to ‘abudu’ or worship the Allah of Ishmael, Idris (Ezekiel) and Dhulkifl (Jonah)! I would no longer celebrate Christmas, Lent and Easter. I would now celebrate Shawal, Dhul-Qa’ada, Dhul-Hajja and Muharram. I didn’t want to be guilty of apostasy and neither did she! That was a deal breaker! Or so it seemed. So, just like that, my dreams of being crowned as a Bajuni elder vanished into the cupid abyss and were blown into smithereens! I would not be able to enjoy some of the perks that come with being a Bajuni elder! My dreams of taking goats from the ‘white highlands’ of Kiambu to the sandy shores of the Bajuni Islands were curtailed! It seemed like, as relationship experts catechize, we were not ‘equally yoked’. I was close to the mountaintop but I could not overcome! I remember her weeping uncontrollably and telling me that, despite the odds, we were inseparable and we could see what time would unravel. Nothing should set us apart, not even religion, she surmised. We were determined not to lose touch with each other. Actually, we spent even more time together and tippy-toed around the elephant in the room, religion.
I was still reminiscing about my heartfelt loss of my invaluable Bajuni when I received a call from my aunt. I had been granted an interview at the American Embassy…
kanyiwest 