One of my fondest memories as a child was sitting at the dining table and gazing out of the window beyond the backyard and outside the fence where people passed. Our house was built in such a way that it was raised. For hours I watched people pass by, to and fro, and even when there was no one I just watched the road. I looked at their faces, their hair, their clothes, the way they walked, the way they gestured and the way they talked if they were not alone. And when it got dark, then I retired and joined my sisters. That was one of my favorite pastimes.
The woman sitting next to me in the taxi with her seven year old son carrying a huge backpack filled with school books, clutching at three straw brooms and striding off, forgetting to give the taxi conductor his fare until he is rudely called back. She told me she survived an accident- the taxi in which she was traveling to work overturned after the brakes failed. She was six months pregnant at the time.
The elderly couple who drive by the bodaboda stage every day on their way to the farm in the village. They lost their home and worldly possessions in a fire six years ago. Everybody asks why they live in a rented house.
The man who is bringing his children up as a single father following a string of failed relationships. Their mother abandoned the family when the youngest was just six months old, and she ran off with another man. That daughter is autistic and needs special care and attention that he cannot afford to give by virtue of the work he does every night. He has decided to give her up for care in the UK.
Another single father whose eldest son has given him years of grief, playing truant from school, lying, cheating, and insulting the father who gave up everything. And then one day he turns up at his father’s office, after going missing from home for seven months, and throws himself at his father’s feet and begs for forgiveness.
That woman who vends sweets for a living. She has been on the streets for eight years and her boast is that she has been able to send money home to her widowed father, and has bought a piece of land on which she is building a two-roomed house which is at the roofing stage. She told me that KCCA goons have made her life hell, her project has stalled because they keep taking her merchandise.
That woman who smiles with everybody and laughs out loud at everything, but deep down, she is hiding a huge secret. She is married to a man she does not love because he abuses her mentally, telling her how fat she is, and when she tries to diet, he chides her on her loss of weight, comparing her to a sugarcane. She is at her wits end, now that she has heard that he is cheating on her with someone at the office, moreover, he is a church leader.
That nine-member family that lives in a two-roomed house. I know that this is not their mother, that she is the second wife and that the older children do not like her and have made her life a living hell. Her husband has been unemployed for a while now, though he does get a few odd deals fixing people’s electricity for a small fee. He was fired from his job with the electricity company and since then, life has gone downhill. His daughter told me she cannot concentrate in school because she is always so hungry and sometimes goes to be with some popcorn and water.
That man with the obsession to beat women. Whose father abandoned him to a step mother and only came home occasionally. Who never ever said a good word to his son, except that he was a good-for-nothing bastard, a “mbwa eno!” And it is from him that he learnt his crude gutter speak, that he was turned into man who never ever appreciated anything good about anything and anybody and turned his anger into violence.
That young woman who is struggling with a drug addiction that has wrecked her life; that single mother selling perfumes to raise her three daughters; that family that has lost three members to cancer in the space of one year; that father who hasn't seen his child in years because he is living illegally in another country and cannot return; that teenager who was bullied for her massive bust, because her breasts just kept growing and growing until she could carry them no more; that child whose grandmother poured a scalding hot sufuria of water on her abdomen and private parts; and another who was locked up in a chicken coop for five months; people who are struggling with sex addiction that at 70, they are still having children; those whose celebrity lives are on the wane; those shoulder high in debt; those fed up with their mundane jobs; those old homeless men who spend the night out in the cold at the City Square; the newly-weds who have suffered four miscarriages in one year; the people who cannot see, hear, speak for themselves; the ones who cannot sleep at night for vermin- bedbugs, cockroaches, rats, fleas; kids who have been sexually abused by their own parent; kids who cannot go to school for poverty and have to sell maize and oranges on the streets; kids who have everything they want; kids who are ostracized and called ‘point-five’ because they are of mixed heritage; the pregnant woman whose partner has been jailed for theft and left her with a mentally challenged son who is admitted to hospital; kids who have never seen their other parent and yet s/he exists but wants nothing to do with them; that girl who obsesses about her looks, her figure and her face; that young lady who is out on the streets every night, selling her body to all and sundry, not because she has to survive, but because that is the easiest way to make money; that girl who is struggling with her body image because she is fourteen and everybody says she is round and shapeless; that guy who wants to be part of the rugby team but is always relegated to the bench; that askari who is not respected the people he works for; the toilet cleaner who has seen all the mess that he can take; that teenager girl who is hiding a pregnancy that her father will surely kill her for when he finds out; that woman who has voices speaking in her head all the time, and her family do not believe her, they say she is imagining things; that woman whose life depends on spreading rumors; that woman who has been brutally raped; that woman who waits up for her husband every night to serve him dinner, even when she knows that he has been out with his side-dish; and the side-dish who spends that young man who has travelled the world; that older woman whose face was disfigured in a plane accident’ that man for who Saturday is the best day of the week because it means he can sleep in, have a heavy breakfast, have his nails done and his hair cut, have a long deep tissue massage, go to the gym, go out and eat a platter of pork or goat’s meat, go clubbing and pick up a girl for the night just because his wife is a hopeless drunk. The list is endless.
I love the human race. I am not obsessed. I am more interested in their stories. I love to watch and to observe.
Everybody has a story.
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