A Knife, Transformers and My Ungodly Fear of Apples.

(or How To Not Show Your “Particulars”)

A lot has been happening in our plot lately.

New things: a new neighbour; a new music system. Blessings galore, I say. Hallelujah!

My neighbour has bought a new music system (the new neighbour). I know this because I saw the packaging material from Jumia in our plot dumpster. I had not gone to rummage through the pit but, in a plot where the pit is home for potato peels and omena heads, you will understand why an orange wrapping paper and a carton would not be difficult to perceive. I also know it is she because she had knocked on my door asking me to come into her house and help her set up ‘something’. I had carried my six-set Stanley’s screwdrivers, a hammer, a tape measure and insulation-tape (red, blue and black)  - and all I did was confirm that the red cable is plugged in red, white in white and yellow in yellow. But from my grand entry into her tiny bedsitter she had known that I was not a man who joked around when called in for a job. I come prepared (no pun intended).

That was three weeks ago.

            Therefore, this is the third Saturday, in as many weeks, where I have been woken by the sound of one particular song. I do not know what the singer says, only the refrain is repeated between the gnarly voice of a Dj yelling, “Thika! Thika!” The refrain simply repeats; “I Want to See your Particulars”.

Well, I have come to believe that she has been playing this particular song for me. I discern this because I see the way she has been eyeing me. She has been ogling me, smiling sheepishly and inviting me over to fix things. Especially, when I am bending to open the door to my bedsitter.

Well, did I tell you I own a bicycle?

No?

But I did say that great things have been happening in our plot?

Well, there is my new Raleigh 6-gear bike. I am the owner. Officially – I have settled the debt at the Shylock’s duka. I love it (not the Shylock duka, but my bike!). I bought a helmet and knee pads for it. (And note, I have the complete attire to go with – the skin-tight biker shorts (SPEEDO written on the sides), like the ones that Louis Hamilton wears in the Tour de Prix. Yes, I wear those (plus, a reflector jacket. My philosophy is Go Big, or Go Home! You won’t see me on my bike dressed like a devoted follower of the Mighty Mighty*3 Messenger of Ebenezer Church).

And, as I was saying, she has been ogling me, especially when I walk into the plot all sweaty from my exercises. The latch of the door to my room is low (our landlord is 5 feet, so I am sure he had no ambition of having long tenants.), yes, the latch is quite low and so I am compelled to bend a bit lower. And not once, but a couple of times, I have heard this beautiful neighbour laugh and say something about the dimples on my gluteus (which I have made a point to hold tight for prominence, and to her satisfaction. And did I say that she has this laughter that cuts through the plot like a beam of happiness? She has.)

Well, that has been our secret relation. She with the music, I with my ‘dimples’.

So, today being a Saturday, I decided to walk into her room and ask for my skillet back, which she had borrowed last weekend (skillet is a pan –rũgío - she called it a skillet, like can you believe that!).

To make it look un-premeditated, I just threw my bathrobe on my naked body and went knocking on her door. The same song was playing. She opens the door, skimpily dressed as always.

I stare at her from foot to crown.

I would have expected no less!

Ngai!

 Weh! She is something. There she was, with her hands behind her back, standing in all the glory of Hellen of Troy. The beauty of Cleopatra fitted into the tiny doorway of a bedsitter.

This is not something I had prepared for. Out of shock, surprise maybe, my hands let go of the bathrobe I had held tightly around my body. The body is reacting…

The sun is rising.

Step-up transformer.

She is giggling.

She mumbles something. I do not hear. My mind is elsewhere – on the plains of Troy fighting and slaying men for the beauty of Hellen. I am wielding my sword, in the fray of the war, and cutting the Trojans left and right.  

She speaks again, this time louder.

Still, I do not hear what she is saying.

I am speechless.

Then, suddenly, she pulls her right hand from behind her back.

A knife!

Father Lord!

Jesus!

Adrenalin rush…

My body reacts…

The sun sets immediately!

Step-down transformer.

They say that when a man is about to die his whole life flashes before him. Well, that may be for a man asleep in his bed. But believe me, when men from Nyeri (a stereotype) see their wives holding knives early in the morning or in the middle of the night; they do not see their lives flash before them. Believe me, I now know better.

I saw something else.

Something like a fish which has just been pulled out of the water and is wiggling and beating hard as it suffocates in the air. Anyone who has seen a fish out of water knows this: the wiggling, the beating, the contorting of a dying fish – that is what I saw. Something like the not-dying hand of a zombie flexing, refusing to be dead.

Whhhhaaaa!

That is me. I dash back into my room. Shut my door and lean on it. My head is thumping very hard and I cannot breathe. My temples throb. Fear, I slide down and sit on the cold floor.

I think I must have passed out because when I came to, my neighbours were busy trying to pry my door open. It is only after I mumbled something in the nature of that I was Okey,  that they left.

“What happened?” the Sunday-school teacher from the corner near the toilets asked.

“I do not know,” say the beautiful Hellen of Troy, our plot’s Slay Queen. “I just asked him to come in and offered him an apple, but then he bolted out of my house like he had seen satan!” she adds.

“Well, maybe he has PTSD,” said the guy who hawks movie DVDs (and other types of movies in which there is always a guy with a pony-tail, and a woman called “Sparklez”).

“What is that?” asks the Sunday-school teacher.

“It is something about traumatic experience in the past and its triggers,” the Movie-man says. “There is a movie I have about a man who was molested by bananas and he lived afraid of them,” he continues. “Would you like to watch it?” he asks looking for a customer among the neighbours. None replies.

My bathrobe is wet. Still, I have never been more relieved when all my fear was reduced to being “Traumatised by Apples”.

But the image of the fish beating and contorting, writhing and wiggling on the floor…