DINDA WALKS!

Dinda walks! It is true son of your mother. They sprang him. “Who…his henchmen?” you ask. Puhliiz. “Smart people are hard to tell tales to… now if you will pass me the Rizla… yeah the Rolling Machine too… I will tell you. I will tell you that Dinda walks.”

This is Kenya, house. This is Kenya. Like they have been saying from way back, this here is the new Kenya. He with a pocketful of Ex- presidents (first ladies don’t count) walks. Like Pink Floyd say: (you) don’t need no education. No sir. I mean, look at Timi here, with tough brains that a truck load of Napshizzle wouldn’t flambé. But he sits here with us, doesn’t he? He is always here quoting dead poets like they were nursery rhymes. What’s it worth for him? Money is the true measure of a man. That is the reason why Dinda walks!

Now Milton don’t pay no rent for Timi. Doth he? All he done is keep Timi pensive about this our Paradise Lost. And in Bunyan’s book, Timi wallows in the ‘Slough of Despond’. Maybe Timi is Pliable always at the mercy of those who have. There for them to use and discard like a pack of Trust or like a voter after Election Day. And what if life were a stage? Timi’s life would be a Shakespearean Tragedy: at best, a Comedy of Errors. Oh poor Timi, e’en though he be “as true as truest horse, that yet would never tire”, he still sits on these Stones with a vacant stare. And all this while, Dinda walks.

At least I had my moments yesterday. I had blissful moments when I lay prostrate at the Temple of Lucre. For one instance people could smell money on me with no grimace at the odours of my aggravated periodontal disease and bi- monthly shower. But why does it have to be yesterday? It is always yesterday for me? Yesterday I got drank… yesterday I smelled success… Why should my last meal be my heritage and my next one- like the NARC Manifesto- an empty vision? Why should my life story and its imperfections be told in the Past Perfect as though it were a eulogy? (“Potash had arrived before the KumiKumi truck”.) And why, pray tell does “Potash will…” have to be an oxy- moron? All this is, certainly, possible in a world where Dinda walks.

At Jevanjee yesterday, the preacher put up his right hand and waved the tattered Bible at the trembling crowd. (I know next month he will have a gilt- edged Bible and a TV show; and that the crowd was trembling because they were hungry.) “Do not let your right hand know what the left one is doing…” he admonished. “An honest man you are, that practices what he preaches!” I observed as he paid me for the Special Delivery with his left hand. But that was yesterday: I was custom paid. But today I am back on these Stones, my fingers sore for clicking them after one Half- Life or the other… “moshi mbili kizee…” Today I am back where I ‘belong’ because Dinda walks.

I am back to squalor beyond Dickensian parallels. Yet yesterday I was ménage with the Sisters Fate. But today they stab in the back. (Witches gave me the Clap!) Vicissitudes. I thought Oliver Twist here had met up with his benefactor or the equivalent thereof, but good fortune was never my lot. (Free beer from a Yuppie doesn’t count because that is in part exchange for what Acolyte refers to as my ‘war stories’ and the pseudo intellectualism, if and when I can sneak it in.) Yeah I am back on these Stones that just might be the end of me because Dinda walks.

In two hours, five O’s not withstanding (like what do you think Utumishi kwa Wote means?) I will be handing over the tools of the trade to Dinda, the Resident pharmacist. That Dinda who cannot tell his brain from a joint on the ground. But that Dinda can afford to walk from a Stroke Two rap. (That is the kind that has got only one conviction.) All the Roach Clips, six Hookahs and Bongs, a forty foot container of Rizla, an eighteen wheeler worth of Premium Grade Busia Gold, motley aerosol and Nitrous Oxide cans… Hey can they sub- poena my Blog? I do not know: but I know that Dinda walks.

Whatever happens today, I know one thing is for sure, for one fleeting moment, Yesterday, I was more than a Regular Mid- Twenties Kenyan Guy trying to afford his next can of Napshizzle.