It is a busy Nairobi afternoon on Kimathi Street. The adhan for the Asr prayer has just been called out and I am waiting for my friend to meet me. I just found out that my travel plans have come through and I would soon be relocating. She says she is off to pick her exam timetable at her college, would I mind waiting around town for her?
We once in a long while get fortunate and have a Joy. One of those friends that are your heart, are there making mistakes with you then reprimanding you right after. You know your Joy. I have mine. I would sit on a refuse bin for her and I don’t doubt that she would ask. I met her in my first year of high school and we became fast friends. We used to sit on the Niger dorm stairs and dream about our future and craft the beginnings of what we have now. Joy and I were in a dance group, Eternity 7. We even got one of our teachers to film us dancing to Winans Phase II’s Always For You and Milele’s Forever. We were preparing our early resumés for our future careers as entertainers, so sure were we that we would become that.
For our dance group rehearsals, we used this long rectangular radio with an inbuilt CD and cassette player. It was stored at an office in the music department building. Once, the music teacher Mr. Owlar refused to let us have the radio. We didn’t like that. At all. We had hot new sequences to show off at the school hall that next weekend and he was coming in the middle of that. Not acceptable. So we waited until it was dark and went to the little office at the music department building. The light was on. Why? We knocked to see if Mr. Owlar was in there. No answer. We tried the door. Locked. Knocked again. Nothing. Joy closed one eye, bent over and peered through the keyhole. A leg! Knocked. “Anyone there?” No answer. She checked to see if the leg had moved. It hadn’t. Is that Mr. Owlar? What is wrong with him? Why isn’t the leg moving? I put my ear to the door and listened. Breathing! The leg had a working lung! What could be happening? We Nancy Drewed to the back of the office and figured that the only way to discover this mystery is to hoist one of us up to the slit of a window that was pouring light onto the kei-apple fence. The ground was thorny and the space was tiny but this was the path to our destiny. Onwards! I was hoisted up and I peeked in to the office. A head said “Eeeii! Girls! What are you doing?” We lost our shit and I was dropped on the thorns, my buttocks bouncing on a hundred thousand syringes of nature.
We ran all the way to the head teacher’s house to report ourselves and attempt to avert a possible expulsion. We arrived breathless at Mrs. Njumbi’s door and knocked. Waited. Knocked again. We now had mastered the art of escalating the humble knock. The door opened. Mrs. Njumbi had a teenage son so I can’t say or not say that that may or may not have been a contributing factor to bothering the head teacher at eight thirty at night. We asked to see his mum. She came out to panting almost-women, breathlessly trying to preempt the inevitable.
“We didn’t intend to!
“We weren’t trying to!”
“Promise!”
“Girls, slow down. What happened?”
“Mr. Owlar!”
“What has happened to Mr.Owlar?”
“In the office. It was dark…alone”
Mrs. Njumbi’s eyes dilated in panic. I am not sure where she went but it was a dark place. She asked in a dark voice, ”What has happened with Mr. Owlar at the office in the dark?”
The story gushed out. How we wanted the radio, how he had said no. How we didn’t take the no. How we were great students for not taking no for an answer like she tells us every day. She stuck her fingers together like in a salute and put her arm in front of her and drew circles with it to mean “move on with the story”
“And then we climbed up on the window and he said eeei girls and we ran ran ran to you to tell you please don’t expel us.”
Mrs. Njumbi looked like she would collapse in relief. A little smile tugged at the corners of her lips and she asked, “Is that all?” Unsure of whether it was a trick question, we answered with “We are sorry Mrs. Njumbi” She said, “I’m glad you are alright girls. Now go to your dorms and rest.”
Joy and I were also singers. We were in a group called Mabawa. We would sing at the Sunday services of our Presbyterian high school. One time, the school was hosting the Challenge Weekend, a crusade type event that was intended to spur the students toward greater spiritual fervor, of the Pentecostal brand. The school had invited a prophet called Habel to lead us to the Lord’s presence all weekend. A bunch of wonderful things often happened during and in the weeks following Challenge Weekend. The students met God and spoke to him in a heavenly tongue. God in turn told them to take prep time seriously, to stop making noise in class, to listen to their teachers and to absolutely not, under no circumstances whatsoever sneak out of school. God often spoke through the prophet or one of the inspired teachers. Sometimes however, God also chose one of the born again Christian Union leaders to speak to and through. She would call him Oh God, My Savior, My God, Our Heavenly Father, God a lot while in prayer. God might have had a very short attention span and wandered away thinking of what to do about the historians saying Africans didn’t build the Great Zimbabwe and what he could use to smack them upside their heads with, to knock some sense into them. So the Christian Union leader needed to remind him every few words that she was talking to him. She would begin her prayer, Oh-God-My-Savior-My-God-Our-Heavenly-Father-God, we come to you Oh-God-My-Savior-My God-Our-Heavenly-Father-God, to say thank you Oh-God-My-Savior-My-God-Our-Heavenly-Father-God, for this day Oh-God-My-Savior-…
Joy and I were never chosen by God to speak to him in front of the student body so we were usually content to be chosen by the school to sing to God and contribute to appeasing him. Besides, there’s a special gargling sound many of the chosen ones used to employ while praying, they would finish a set of Oh-God-My-Savior-My-God-Our-Heavenly-Father-God, sharp intake of gargle-like-breath and resume with renewed energy. We hadn’t mastered it. We just sounded like we were moaning. And not the right kind either. On top of that, we didn’t speak the heavenly language. So we took our place to usher the believers to the glory of God-Our-Savior-Our-God-Our-Heavenly-Father-God through song.
This particular Saturday, we finished up singing and prophet Habel got on. He said he had a special anointing with him that afternoon and if we all wanted to partake, we should make a line all the way to the end of the hall and join our sweaters together like rope. We were to all hold the rope in readiness to receive the anointing. Five hundred girls formed two columns and all held the rope between them, all the way to the back. We rushed to the middle of the line so as not to be left behind. Prophet Habel held the front of the sweater rope and asked if we were ready. Are you readeeaaay for theeee annnnointingggg! Are you readaaaay childrennnn of Gaaaahd!
“Yeeeeeaaaah!” Ecstatic shouting through out the hall.
Then prophet Habel lifted his end of the sweater rope and waved it down with a “whooooshhh” said on his microphone. The whole line of students collapsed on the ground and many began convulsing, others were speaking in the heavenly language and others still, shouting the Hebrew God’s attributes “Elohim! El Shaddai! Tsidkenu! Mekadeshkem!” The girls had received the great anointing of the fainting and I was sadly, not one of them. Neither was Joy. We fell to the ground but only under the weight of the other girls who were lucky enough to be caught up, or down, in the spirit. It hurt. Physically. People were falling over each other and crashing to the ground, vibrating in the anointing and scratching knees and elbows. We would always need a healing service after a special anointing like this. Luckily, the Christian Union leader had her special way that catches God’s attention so we dusted off and waited.
That evening, one of our dance group members caught holy laughter. She started laughing all of a sudden and in five minutes of continuous laughter, collapsed on the floor holding her tummy. Still laughing. At first, we laughed along in pleasure and gratitude to God for gifting one of us with holy laughter. However, because it wasn’t an anointing for the rest of us, Wanjikû kept laughing by herself after the first few minutes. Two hours later, God was still tickling her and we had to take her out to the school field so as to minimize the distraction it was causing to other students, who by now were attending prep. One of us told us to start praying for Wanjikû and ask God to turn down the anointing a little. He didn’t agree with us so Wanjikû kept laughing. This was now her third hour and she was exhausted. One of us got water in a bottle and was feeding it to her while another was wiping her brow with a wet towel. Joy and I were beginning to get a little bit freaked out with all this pleasure exhibition and started to feel uncomfortable watching it. Like a long drawn out love scene in a PG movie. We got a little more stern with God and asked him to make it stop please Oh-God-My-Savior-My-God-Our-Heavenly-Father-God. On the fourth hour, Mary’s laughter started to die down and she was spent. Any more and it would have been stigmata. We carried her to our dorm and left her to rest. She murmured unintelligible words all the while with a satiated smile on her face. It would be years before we learnt about abnormal autosuggestibility.
Joy loved to dance. Even more than all of us in the group. Most Saturdays, she would set up the radio in the school hall and play Buju Banton and Chaka Demus & Pliers and move her buttocks like I have never been able to understand. She loved Ragga, the pulsating ska genre derivative principally from Jamaica. It was sensual but it had a rhythm that would allow you to show off your detachable waist and Joy’s waist was nothing if not detachable. She would dance battle with Waithera, a devoted Tupac Shakur fan, who’s buttocks loved Ragga too. Whenever I would try and join them the always swelling crowd would look at me then at my hind-sides and their faces would fall in pity. I would step back and let these two almost-women put all our back parts to shame. Till today, whenever I go out clubbing with Joy, I hardly get up to dance with her. Which is a pity because her buttocks still defy logic.
Joy then went on to study broadcasting and hosted her own entertainment show on the state owned channel. She then joined the cast of a popular drama and even began producing and directing her own show on the state owned channel. She was just last week slaying dragons and saving the world. She recently went back to college because she is a lion and a warrior and everything about her is transcendent. She would probably say that I have saved her family the trouble of writing her eulogy with this last paragraph.
I look up from my seat at the Turkish restaurant where I had been waiting for her on Kimathi Street and tried to smile, thinking about how we were going to talk about me traveling without Joy.
Traveling without joy.
