#ndilate!

You are late for work!…
 
I know y’all can attest to this, at least most of you. Keep hitting the snooze button and stealing “just a few more minutes, just a few more minutes.” Then you jerk awake and.. voilà! its daytime!
 
This nightmare came true for me one morning during my radio days when I did the early bird news shift.
My phone alarm was stuck at 4:30am on all days because the office driver would pick me at 5am or thereabouts and then we would go on the morning pickup for other early birds.
I slept soundly that night, not like a baby though. As usual, the alarm went off at 4:30am but I did not stick to my regular ritual of leaping out of bed. I hit snooze. “Just for today, “ I said. Five minutes later, my faithful alarm reminded me that I needed to get up. I reached out and “snoozed” it. “I can do without a bath today,” was my next excuse.
 
I think the devil must have been working overtime that morning because in my haste to snooze, I “dismissed”.

Five minutes became 10, then 15, 20, 25, 30, and graduated into an hour, one hour and thirty minutes and more. I even dreamt that I had woken up, had a bath, dressed up and walked out of the house, and into the office shuttle, and even reached work and started doing the bulletin. However, I couldn’t read the words on the teleprompter. And that’s when the struggle became really real!

Next thing I knew was that I had jerked awake. It was light outside. “Hoo! Today!”

I fumbled under my pillow for my old faithful blue Nokia ka-torchi phone and pressed the “on” button- the green one. It had gone off. Battery.
 
“Nfuddeeeeee!” I screamed, throwing aside the covers and leaping out of bed like a ninja.
 
I ran to the sitting room like a bat out of hell, tripping on my slippers and nearly falling headlong into the sofa. The wall clock showed 10 minutes to 7am. I was cooked! T-O-T-A-L-L-Y cooked and ready to serve. My first bulletin was in 10 minutes time!!
 
I dashed back to my bedroom and switched on the light. Just a click. No electricity. Damn!!! Luckily I had non-iron clothes in my wardrobe-(all women need to have a copy). There would be no bath today. Just get into the clothes and—— run! With the skirt on, I dashed back to the sitting room. 6:53am. Back to the bedroom, pulled on my blouse, buttoned up. Back to the clock, 6:54am. Back to the bedroom, “The shoes, oh the shoes where are these shoes,” my shriek became a mean grunt, as I knelt on the floor and groped wildly into the space where I had kicked the flats some days before.
 
All the while, I was yelling, “Nfuddeeee! nfudddeeee, yaaayyeeeee, maaaaama nze!!”, as I sprinted from room to room, into room, out of room, back to room and in room in one shoe.
 
The clock had ticked itself into 6:57am. “I’m not gonna make it!,” I wailed desperately, not knowing what explanation I was going to give my boss who I was certain, was going to make it clear that I knew, and understood “just how much money the station had lost!”.
I rushed to the bathroom, threw water on my face, grabbed the hand-towel, wiped my face, threw the towel in the sink. I would Vaseline my face on the boda-boda. My legs- that would be a story for another day.
 
Handbag, keys, opened the door, locked the door, keys in bag. The driver must have called and called until he gave up.
 
Then I stopped in my tracks. My neighbors’ cars were still parked outside their houses. Their curtains were drawn. The place was eerily quiet. I started hyperventilating.
 
It was Sunday.
You know how when you don’t work on Sunday?

#girliegirlie

This mivumba thing is going too far.

Three, no actually four of them have committed this sin. Wait- there’s five of them, yes, five. This is a transgression for which they need to seek divine help, forgiveness, intervention. Their eyes are attracted to bright colors, when they should actually be looking for more laid back, earthy tones.

Kati, where do I start? From the source perhaps. Which happens to be the open-air markets where these second-hand clothes have taken over. Poor and rich – we all buy. Just dive into the pile, go for the brightest looking piece or garment, yank it out, shake-shake it a bit, and then hold it against your body and see if it fits. It does, or does it? Start haggling.

“Nnina lukumi.” You say hopefully.

“Madam, wawulidde nga mpita nkumi ssatu. Tommalira biseera, kizeewo!”

And because you know you can go and rework the outfit, whittle it down to your size, you look into your purse and give him his 3,000 shillings.

A few meters away, this bespectacled man, who may be in his thirties but looks like he is fast approaching 50, is yelling about his sweaters. “Abakyala, wofiisi, come and buy, Ange Noir, Tropicana, obusweeta buli wano, come and buyiiiiiiii!”

Yesterday was kind of cold. One guy was dressed like he was buffering himself against winter. Purple shirt, light purple sweater, blue jacket.

I did a double-take—— there are things like these that are not supposed to happen.
Light purple sweater, like lavender, mauve, lilac?

Today someone’s in a sunshine yellow blouse- he thinks it is a sweater. The other week another man wore a red “sweater”. Complete with small sweet heart-shaped buttons on the sleeves.

The blouse-wearing culprits need to be enlightened. When vendors are yelling about sweaters, they should know that not everything that is woolen, long-sleeved, and does not have buttons up its front, is a man’s sweater.

You know how when you’re being too girly-girly?