Kwani I Must Always Have a Title?

It will be easier for Raila to become president than for all those lined up to suck The Potashian dick getting round to doing it. I drink too much so I use my dick mainly for peeing. Nevertheless, I haven’t been laid this decade and I live in a shack sans tap water so my dick has gone sore from all that dry wanking. But I needed a more subliminal orgasm so I decided to write this blog to fuck your brain. And damn, you liked it so you told all your friends about it. Yeah, over Java coffee or whatever yuppie hangout, you told them: ‘Oh, Potash… oh, he write sooo good!’

Meanwhile some deprived sod in France decided to ride on my name to get fame. He started doing lame boy vibe like, oh, Potash… sijui what... I fucked his chick! Yeah, dude, what’s up with that? You know, I thought a guy has to get it up before he can get it in? But now I been wondering, what will the dude be saying when I am really famous and Canal France is kissing my rear canal? … that he fucked me too?

Then the other day I got me some bus fare to the city. I wanted to talk to some Publisher about getting my book out in time for Christmas. Unto us a book child is born! When I walked into their office, they wondered as to how people were calling in asking for me, like I worked there. You know like my stalkers and I should take it some place else. Gee, now, dear ‘imposing fan’ show the hell do I get that publishing deal if you will not let me hang out with my publisher.

In the old neighbourhood, they say The Potash sold out. That he turned himself into a heartless yuppie. Please. I thought you need like a profession to be a yuppie? And I still do nothave one. But it doesn’t mean a brother can’t try. Like, hey, all I wanted to do was write. And I haven’t written much in days. Then again the ultimate question that a mother in law will ask is: ‘Write…mhhh, so who do you write for… ati bloggo, whassat?’

I do not have a brand new hustle now. But I am not packing boxes at the EPZ or getting chilli hued fingers shoved up my presumed-pilferer butt in a muhindi sweatshop. The only reason I am not in the city is known to you. But like I said earlier, I will return anon. I will return now that the heat is down. I mean you know it wouldn’t be easy living in this city when they want you in four police divisions including Buruburu.

I have heard it said that In Buruburu, they do not find you, well at least not before the bullet does. The last time Constable G- from Gigiri was buying me a Napshizzle with a fifty bob he had jacked from me, he told me that in Bururburu they want me for a string of disturbances at the Dandora Bus Stop circa 1997. Can you believe that? And to imagine that until the other day, I thought that Dandora was a rap group and not a neighbourhood… Tafsiri Hiyo, kizee!

All, in all, I am just tired of all this bullshit about Potash this; Potash that. What the fuck people talking when they do not even know the shit I been through? So what if I was seen at The Grand for breakfast and the buffet lunch at the Intercon? What matters is that in my head as I plonked wee morsels of prime food on my plate, my mother’s ubiquitous question kept creeping at me: ‘…hii sukuma itasukuma wiki?’

The more things change the more they remain the same.

And everyday I feel less and less capable of doing this blog. But wasn’t it only natural that it would take a life of its own. A life that I would find impossible to relate to. And man I am tired, not only today- the heck I haven’t had a wink of sleep in more than forty hours- but everyday. I just keep going through life in this daze of Nicotine and Ethanol. I am not the person I was though; I am still fucked up… but I am happy.

And maybe this blog wasn’t about happy, and it is still not about that. But Potash is someone even I no longer understand. Maybe it is time for a rethink. Just a couple more cans of Napshizzle in the hood will hopefully fix all this purported yuppiness.

Yes, it might just be that all I really need is to be your kind of yuppie- Young Urban Poser!

PLANET OF THE ACHES

Ape 1: “What will he find there?”
Ape 2: “His destiny…!”
(Planet of The Apes; 1968)


Ati Nairobi Marathon… Ish, surely! How does someone just start running in the morning unless they are running from a Nairobi West bar towards a Westlands one? Okay, but even that is for yuppies and spoilt rich kids. You jua me; if you see me running then you know that the police are chasing me.

Yeah, so wacha Martin Lel types do their thing and get the fame. As for me, I have discovered my own claim to fame. Dude, I am gon’ be famous. Even have my own reality TV show and a Foundation that will adopt African children faster than The Madonna-Brangelina Corporation.

Yes, I have found my own claim to fame: four aching teeth. So somebody tell me the number to dial for the Guinness Book of World Records. My bad teeth, yeah, like I can try get them on the Guinness Book of Records. I mean they are more of an oddity than fucking Sarakasi on the drums.

Mhh... I will get famous enough to cry on Oprah. Even get a call for one of those Jenny Jones dental makeovers. And also, my own Private Charity: Potashian Teeth for Africa. (Trouble is, my smile will scare the donors!) Oh and lest I forget, I will even have my own cookery show: Let’s Cook for the Toothless. (Gee, it does sound like some NGO, that one, innit?)

But I still will not date Susan Kamau!

***

Now I am writhing on the sisal filled gunny sack that passes for my mattress. I lapse into a kind of delirium and my mind jarred by the pain and seeking escape transports me to the trendy Nu Metro Theatres. It is the launch of Kenya’s biggest movie: The Planet of the Aches.

Damn, here comes an ignoramus from Sunday Trash: “Potash, do you think Riverwood has finally come of age?”
“What the fuck is Riverwood?” I glare at him knowing that if I responded; No Comment, he will take it as a compliment.

“Why do you always have to borrow an Americanism?” Queries The Potash. “… Kenyan Hip Hop… sijui Riverwood… aih!”
“So what do you call your act?” asks the copy paster who masquerades as a newspaper editor.
“I don’t know, man… I don’t. What about Cinai… Cinenai… Naicine? … Dude, Me I love Nairobi, Period!”
The idiot then walks of to fill her Vybe/ The Source template with bull crap about some woman or other she fancies to be my girlfriend!

***

Planet of the Aches. A Potash Cinema Presentation. Written and Produced by Potash. Soundtrack available on Potash Records. (The lead single is obviously titled: Tingisha hiyo … Meno!) Edited by Cousin Potash. Casting by Brother Potash... you know the Kenyan deal, eh! Hey, even my granny- actually her dentures- has a cameo appearance.

And the whole of Nairobi is here for the launch. You know, all those guys you see at carni, then when you are at Bob’s- Coasto- they are there; Crayfish, Naivasha, every where. Party Idlers! Dude, even some high ranking bureaucrat from the Ministry of Youth Affairs is here. (The guy they recalled from retirement. I forget his name but he has enormous experience in youth and related affairs. The guy was part of the team that put together the Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba Concert at the dawn of Kenya’s Independence. That concert if your grandfather will recall, saw the launch of a Global Hit: Malaikay, Naku-penday Mulaikay!)

I can tell the crowd loves my movie. “What did the Potashian Molar say to the Premolar when Potash ordered a breakfast Napshizzle?”
“Ache up… Ache up!”
Hahaha!
Okay the guys from the BBC and Shit News Africa, New York do not look impressed. I reckon they are waiting for the animal scenes. Damn I forgot that small detail. That calls for a sequel now.

In the sequel I will be a masai warrior hunting lions for their teeth then going to a witchdoctor- In the Hut of Darkness- for the dental transplant.

Well in that case, instead of Potash providing voice talent for the leading moral, we will have Eddie Murphy. Instead of Potash playing Potash, we will have Samuel L. Jackson and the soundtrack: Shady/ Aftermath. Oh, yeah, when I am hunting the lion, where a guttural “laleiyo.. lale…” would suffice, all you will hear is: “G-G-G-G-Unit…!” But to get the Movie deal in the first place, the script has to be by a middle aged white guy whose sole dream for Kenya is the building of a great fence across the Mara that will keep the monkeys out and lovely elephants in.

***

Damn, I just dreamed myself out of a job. Okay, what if I change the Potashian in Potashian Teeth for Africa to Rhino Teeth for Africa or even better; Pachydernus Dentata Africanus! Maybe but I will still need to do a Michael Jackson and get an exotic name like Karen Blixen, Joy Adamson, Elspheth Huxley, David Anderson, Caroline Elkins et al, to tell a Kenyan story.

Ish… dude…!

Now I am wide awake nursing my private aches. The leading moral sets the pace. It is as though that ossified glob of pain has my brain’s pain centres on speed dial. Yeah, for all that pain, it is probably a broad band connection. Then a premolar ups the ante with such foul drainage it is as though my brain has liquefied into my root canal…

The pain is my heritage while my destiny like Prometheus stays bound to these stones, in the ‘hood that we keep sitting on- Waiting! So I write some more; maybe with this writing thing I am gonna be the James Joyce to my destiny. Destiny Unbound!

SUNDAY MORNING SERVICING

Brethren, our reading today comes from the Book of Nemesis. Yes, Nemesis: the Vengeful God.

“ ..And the Good Lord revealed himself to Moses in form of a burning herb. Behold when he was done inhaling, he went down the mountain bearing two tablets. One tablet was of Mandrax and the other of ecstasy. And all that was in the beginning…”

Now before we jack you for the pastor’s testes money, let us hear the Testimony of Brother Potash. He that was delivered from the Power of Darkness!

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, back when I was still living in the city. Yes back then when I was living a life of debauchery and sin. It was that kind of morning, you know, when you have a can of Napshizzle, two gaffs and a whole fifty seven bob left over from the previous night’s dunda. Hell, I even had a Take Away, and it was not from Munyiri’s Fish and Chips. You feel that vibe, eh?

Now this Take Away wasn’t so bad to look at. I mean I have seen worse, you jua- like those with three epidermis layers: one baby powder, the other hydrocortisone cream- fair and lovely ya kadogo, eh- and the original layer, all rubbery now. (All that below a ‘me-is-roosey’ weaves looks like Michael Jackson got a sex change.) But this one, zii… this Take Away was timam. On point dadi! It had two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears- all where they are meant to be.

In between its ears was a grey area, but I could understand, after all Napshizzle and grey matter do not mix. Besides who is perfect? Some got their cleft lips, others have squint eyes and I got my piles. That’s God’s image all up my arse! It is a little wonder then that Sunday school taught me to ask God to give me serenity to accept the things I cannot change. And those things include haemorrhoids and getting drunk and taking away the last moron I see at the shebeen before I pass out.

She smiled at me. Her lower incisors were chipped. That explained the sore lacerations on my tongue. A moment before I had been thinking that I had cut my tongue chewing muguka bila Big G. Suddenly, I made a mental note to get a Tetanus shot and a rabies one too, soon as there was sufficient blood in my alcohol stream.

I grinned at her but it came out a scowl because a bunch of demons were using the few brain cells the alcohol had left me as a Geisha like wanking aid. She turned around lazily but certainly not without effort. It occurred to me then that she was on the plus size. You know the kind that is too fat to fit in a movie seat. (Maybe that is the plus side of the plus size, they save you on movie dates. But I cannot afford the movies anyhow and also I always was of the opinion that only plants should get flowers.)

“sema sweetie…” That was her speaking not me. Now, too many Morning Afters have taught me that if a mama calls you ‘Sweetie’ in the morning, it means that she cannot remember your name. And I am usually not offended because even I cannot always remember what I was prostituting myself as the night before. Was I Potash? Just Potash, the professional bum or was I masquerading as Potash, EDB, XYZ- Project Management Consultant? Maybe I was Aku Kuku Manga, a madinka refugee from South Sudan. (Okay, enyewe that last one is reserved for Odieros. It has suggestions of a Mandingo the size of an AK- 47… oh, I dream of Africa… Shidwe!)

But what does it matter in the morning. The end must have justified the noun. What is in a name anyway, the late Billy someone used to ask. A name is just a tag. But talking of tags, what was hers? It must have been Carol, Susan or Mary. You know, something so unremarkable you could as well name your daughters; A, B or C. It had to be something like that because I can never forget a Mueni, Akinyi or Wakonyo and not just because I had been screaming their names all night, eh! But lenga that storo… kill that vibe mpaka like baadayes…

She put a podgy paw on my upturned cheek. It was as though she was turning the veve glob- tuksin- beneath it. Then her face went solemn like. You know that look a mama has when she remembers that the CD broke. (Eehh, some of you jamaas is asking, what CD? I jua your maneno … wacha tu!)

“You don’t go to church, sweetie?” she queried
“I do. I mean, I even go for Kesha at ‘One Love Licker Store…’ I replied
“Blasphemy… Ngai!” She screamed.
“Huh? Isn’t blasphemy the prerogative of the non-Christian?” I exploded dripping sarcasm.
“What is prerogative?” She asked.
“Oh fuck… anyway, the only godly butt I kiss is a cigarette one!” Quoth the Potash.
“You will rot in hell, sweetie, you will… “The girl yelled.
“Cool at least that will give me an answer to the stock question: What are you up to these days, Potash? Currently, I am rotting in Hell!” I stated philosophically.
And all she could say in response to that was; ““Shidwe Pepo baya!”
“Now you are not only being judgemental,” I remarked, “but you are also blaspheming the devil”

That is the moment she plugged her years and started screaming like a proselyte on the Day of Pentecost.
“Get Up! Get Up!” She was mouthing. “We are going for Morning Service at the Glory Church…”
But I am not the kind to get up on Sunday morning; I just Get it Up!
Morning Glory….

And thus another soul- yet another proselyte- was won over to the Potashian Sunday Morning servicing!