CANDID TALK : Shangingi Asha resurfaces at Mzee Shirima’s joint

My Chinese plastic wallet does all sorts of financial acrobatics. One day it is crying in the corridors of financial ICU in the throes of death, while on the other, it has a windfall and I feel and act like an Arab oil trader sheik after clinching a multi-billion dollar deal.

My gait changes from duck-like wobble to self-assured bounce of a very rich bloke. I shift language gears too - from speaking Uswaz “national” language to the broken English you are now reading.

I show off to folks like Hussein the Uswaz wag, whose sole occupation is to sit at a corner at Mzee Shirima’s pub, sipping a single beer with their eyes trained on the bar gate whiling away time waiting for “a donor” to irrigate their throats for them without parting with a coin. What if the said parasite happens to be Asha the Shangingi? You’ll be sure to cough money meant for rent or school fees and live to regret it.

Shangingis never buy a single drop. That is why I have learnt to first peek in the bar and if any such creature is lurking there, I leave unnoticed, as fast as my legs can carry me! Even the most generous beer “donor” like me frowns at such folks especially during such hard times, when pockets and wallets are breathing their last.

In case you do not know, who Shangingis are, let me clear the air for you: they are women, who spend all their time in the bar waiting for their prey. They imagine that you work at the central bank.

This week, things were beginning to look good for me after I was paid some commission. What this meant was that my wallet had been resuscitated – with a few msimbazis. When I perched myself on those sina taabu stools, I did not know that Asha would show up almost immediately, complete with smudgy lipstick that made her look she had been drinking human blood.

She had her hair dyed red, looking she would explode into flames if she walked near a tank of petrol. I suffer bouts of generosity whenever there is something in my wallet and the thirsty throat happens to be that of woman, shangingi or not.

Whenever I am loaded to the teeth, I unleash beers like a mad man does. Men and women love it when a man is a fool enough to spend money irrigating their throats and they, not reciprocating.

After swallowing a tankful of beer, I ordered rounds followed by many more rounds. A few hours down the road we were all jabbering like mad monkeys. Topics ranged from the current politics to Yanga and Simba tournaments.

Someone brought up the English Premier League, the La Liga. Soccer stuff bores me to the bone marrow. By the time I left Mzee Shirima’s joint, I was minus 50,000. She had swallowed it all.