Let's get to know each other...

 My phone rings.

I am resting, reading yesterday’s paper. I have just completed the household chores. I have just completed a “thorough” cleaning of the house.  The wife and kids are at their grand-folks and, so, I have to clean the utensils (the one mug of coffee), and thoroughly clean the house (pick the two groundnut skins on the table), I would hate for them to walk back in and the kids find just how their dad lives like an animal if left to his own devise.

Anyways, my phone rings.

I am in the middle of reading the previous day’s paper; The Nation (Monday 16^th April, 2018), I am reading Philip Kitoto’s column. I have a like to read this part of the newspaper. May be it is because of the various and varied problems that different people encounter and ask for advice and help for. Honestly, the problems are varied: some are really tough issues while some border absurdity and I find them quite laughable. I say “laughable” guardedly because my few years on this side of the sun (mũhuro ũyũ wa riũa) have taught me that, often, it is easy to reduce another’s problem to simply his/her inability to keep his/herself together. And, of course, to attribute their success to, simply, ‘luck’. It is human? It is normal, right?

What struck me of the segment I was reading is the man’s description of himself:

“I am a very patient, hard-working, God-fearing man, adorable and handsome. I don’t believe money is everything in life and I have never abused any woman. I parted company peacefully with those who left me.”

Well, well, well.

Well, let’s say for a man going through the kind of shitstorm this guy is going through, he is kind of composed – he kind of has got his act together. Sure, he has got his heart in the right place. Enough to say that a good number of us would not be as quite positive about ourselves, especially when it seems as if the devil has gone before God and pulled  a dare like Job’s (Quick reminder: Job is the guy in the Bible who kept singing Casting Crown’s ‘Praise You in the Storm’ despite the his world being turned upside down… I can’t help but start humming the song at this point).

Personally, I doubt I would use the same words with the same ease. I am the kind of person who gets uneasy when filling forms and they ask: Religion; Tribe; Sex…. Of sex, and my mind helplessly wanders to the story of this woman who filled in, “Seven or Eleven Times a Week” (… a story for another day… By the way, who counts? Form me it is either; a) Nil, b) Present, but ish-ish…whatever that means, or c) Divine! (Here you mimic the Candy Crush voice)…like I said, story for another day).

Back to the ringing of the phone:

It is Mystique Venus. We exchange niceties. I check on Artur (Arthur), he is well, I am informed.

“So, we are here with Kilel, and are wondering when to expect an article from you for ‘our’ blog.”

I am excited.

We have a blog: NakuruScribes

I am to write my ‘first’ piece for the blog.

I am excited…but the excitement gives way to anxiety.

How am I to write the first piece for such a great undertaking on our part?

How does my opening line become memorable?

What to write about?

Well, this is a problem. But totally unlike Kitoto’s above.

Perhaps the best beginning is always to begin from the beginning.

From the introduction:

My name is Macaria waGatundu.

I love stories.

I love reading and writing.

I love books too – well, my love for reading and writing above already pre-empts this, doesn’t it? (or is there a love for reading and writing which does not include books? Hieroglyphics, perhaps? Emojis?)

The only love that is above this is that of my family (nuclear, extended) – the kids, especially, the girl who would rather watch Dora than read, and the littlest feller in the house who will tear pages from books (but, I comfort myself that he is getting intimate and getting to know them in his own ‘vandalising’ way.)

Let’s go to the beginning.

I love stories.

My love for stories was nurtured in me by my father in whose lap I sat as young child. I recall the different stories he would narrate to me. I also remember a few ‘lies’ he concocted in his narrativising.

I remember how he would feign not to know that he had told me the same story in a different variation some time back. I remember how he would tell a different story so as to confirm and prove to me that he was not lying.

From these ‘lying’ and ‘unlying’ story-telling sessions, I learnt the power of narratives. The power of the stories we tell to others. Most importantly, the power of the stories we tell ourselves.

My love for reading, as a consequence, emerged from my desire to scour and scavenge the stories for myself.

But reading requires discipline. This I learnt from the man whose name I bear; Stephen Macharia, the late. May God rest his soul in peace. Enough to say that Macharia Senior was a self-educated man. His bookshelf was the first big bookshelf that I ever saw. From him I borrowed books (some which I never returned, some I lost, and some I am still holding on to this day).  He was a man who had utter respect for the written word.

Well, now that we are talking about him, I may as well tell you how I learnt the word “Etiquette.”

I learnt it from him.

I was barely six years old. I was sitting next to him (I do not recall what it is we were doing), all I remember is that I had this sudden urge to get up and leave the room (I think he sent me somewhere, not sure), and so, I got up and, like the foolish boy I was, I straddled his legs which were resting on a jũng’wa. You can imagine my horror when he grabbed me by the scruff. Luckily, he did not clobber me but instead sent me to fetch a dictionary from the bookshelf, and he spelt the word which I was to find: “Etiquette”.

Believe me, he had me reciting the word over and over again.

Well, let’s say it was a sing-song even while I was in school the following week.

I mean, I had learnt a word that barely anyone in my class could mouth!

From him I learnt the importance of reading, and the discipline that is required in it.

Love came later as I became more adept in playing “hide-n-seek” with words in books.

This, well, is my introductory piece. How high my aim was and how low the arrow falls, I may never know. What is important is that I have made your acquaintance, you who has read this piece.

To you, who has honoured me with your time thus far, “Thank You!”

To you, who I lost in the first line, well, I borrow a line from the book which we, Nakuru Scribes, read last month, “I don’t give a … (I will give you a hint, the book is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F¤¢k!” by Mack Manson.  But, here is the rub, if I lost you at the beginning will you know what I have said? Still, “I don’t give a …”

See you always!