I'm fortunate enough to get a free ride home every evening after 8 hours of work. And I'm also fortunate enough to live close enough to the city so that I usually get dropped first by our kind, gender sensitive (not all of them are though) drivers. So this past Saturday, the 24th, I end up in the car with a guy I have never seen or heard of and I decide, oh well, there are always new people joining the company. I decide as usual that I'm going to mind my own business and I hope that he does the same. But does he?
"Why don't you just change the station? I hate this language, I hate these people with a passion...."
I ask the man why he has to shout so unreservedly about his hate for the Kikuyu music playing on the car radio. He says that he hates the music so much he hates the kikuyu people and that that is what makes him disagree with his pals sooooo much.
I'm thinking: this guy has pals????! Shock!
I ask the guy sitting in the back with me whether he knows who this guy is. He doesn't. I ask him whether he sounds like he's from the same parts that he comes from, he says that yes, he could be. The lucky guy is dropped a few seconds later and I'm stuck with a mouth and it's man filled with hate.
For the next twenty or so Kilometres, I'm forced to listen to how much this gifted gab's jibber jabber about how much he hates the people of the tribe I happen to have been born into, over and over again. He says:
"That tribe is garbage".
I cringe
"They are primitive"
I suck in my breath so sharply my lungs ache
"blah blah blah"
I thank God that he's starting to sound like a raging waterfall in the distance and for one second I'm not in the car with the lunatic.
"We will continue killing you until you are finished!"
Damn! He couldn't just let me drift into dreamland. At this point, I snap and tell him to.."shut the hell up!" Like a baby he says, "don't tell me to shut up. Who are you to tell me to shut up, this doesn't concern you".
What?! This doesn't concern me? This doesn't concern me? I listen to him saying how much he hates me, the driver, our tribe, that we are garbage, primitive and stupid and how they, whoever they are, are going to kill us until we are finished, and this doesn't concern me?
You try listening to a man with a high pitched voice for twenty kilometres and see if your ears don't hurt after that. He's likely to be atleast 2 or 3 years older than me but I had to tell him to shut up. Why?
- He was talking too much in that unmanly voice of his
- He was proclaiming his eternal hatred for MY tribe
- He threatened to kill us (I have audio proof that he made those threats)
- He called us primitive, garbage and something else I cannot quite remember because at the rate he was going and after how long I had been listening to him, it started to sound like blah, blah, blah, blah.
So yes, I told him to shut the hell up and yelled a few other things that I will edit out of the video I have, so that I don't incriminate myself along with incriminating him.
And by God, whoever said that women talk too much to fulfill the 2000 words per day myth, obviously had never met this man; this guy was going on and on and on and on. Energizers would have nothing on this man's mouth.
It took me a while to get over it and people wonder why I was so incensed by this. They weren't in the car that night so none of them would understand. And most of them were from certain other communities, not mine, so obviously, they wouldn't understand.
You! You know who you are. If you ever read this, I hope you get to this part because I think I should tell you that you are a very sick man, seek professional help lest you hold a panga to a Kikuyu that I happen to know. I shan't spare you if I find out that you are behind ambushes and attacks of my people, even if I don't know them personally, I wouldn't hesitate to tell the world what you did.
But for now, I'll protect you and keep the video to myself. And people think the tribalism problem is behind us! Hmh! This is a young guy, who someday, might become a leader in the community. He'll get children, brainwash them in the same way he no doubt was, and incite the youth of the future to attack their Kikuyu brothers.
With people like these, the killings never really end because there is always someone who wants to hit back. Who can blame those hitting back if the only thing making a man like this attack, is his pure, unreserved and loudly proclaimed hatree for the other tribe. And to call the Kikuyu primitive is quite laughable. He forgets that he works for a Kikuyu, lives in a neighbourhood with a Kikuyu name, the flat he lives in is owned by a Kikuyu, the matatu he takes to work every morning is probably owned by a Kikuyu, goes to the kiosk owned by a Kikuyu....seriously! Talk of the proverbial pupp that bites the hand that feeds it. And to call the Kikuyu primitive! If anyone is primitive in this picture it is most definitely him. Poor fellow so backward in his thinking that he deosn't even realize it.
You are a very sick man!
1 comment:
Reads like fiction, girl. But you forgot to mention that the man you somehow managed to conjure up in your mind isn't any different from you. Yes, I can feel the hate in you: only Kikuyus employ people in Kenya, only Kikuyus own matatus in Nairobi, only Kikuyus own houses in the neighbourhood where the man in your mind lives and only they are civilized. I have nothing against you and your man; both of you are after all only being real; born in Kenya; raised in Kenya; and recovering slowly from the trauma of Kenya after December 27. My only fear is that you and your man are future of Kenya.
JO
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