Unsightly sight of bathing Tatu and the fire that followed

Welcome to this weekly insanity that will keep you pinching or biting yourself the whole of this afternoon to keep you from dozing off as you read it. I am, on my part biting my tongue so that I don’t, like it has happened before, drench the keyboard with saliva – from boredom. If you find yourself bored stiff, I warn my readers, enemies and friends alike, that they are free to visit other juicier stories in this newspaper.

At the crack of the dawn, the Uswaz Muezzin reminds our Muslim brethren that it is time to go for prayers. For those like me whose religious consciousness has been eaten away by vermin found in the murky god-forsaken Uswaz, it is the beginning of another gruelling day. It marks the start of another day when my fingers will be wearing on the keyboard, writing, writing and writing. By the end of the day, I will be feeling like one whose head is carrying a regiment of Makonde drummers after a gongo binge!

That’s my life! As you all know, communal “passport size” latrines-cum-bathrooms are so placed that when you wake up pressed to empty your bowels, you are forced to cover considerable distance before you get the much-needed cathartic relief. The situation is worse especially after having eaten cow (or may be donkey) “socks” also known as “makongoro” or such offal the previous day.

My stomach does all sorts of nauseating acrobatics and makes the noise resembling baying of donkey. It is terrible, if I find Tatu the barmaid bathing inside the bathroom-cum-latrine and a kilometre-long queue of other Uswahilinites clutching their water buckets as if their whole lives depend on it, each of them eager to bathe or just to relieve themselves.

Recently, driven by the urge to purge myself of the cow socks that were doing crazy somersaults in my stomach, I rushed into the johns, only to be greeted by unsightly sight of bathing Tatu in her birth suit (these latrines have sacks for doors). As I rushed out of the offending sight, all I heard were obscenities that would have made the devil to cover his ears and cringe with consternation.

From there, she accused me of deliberately peeping on her as other Uswahilinites listened with amusement. Bisho Ntongo was not assumed for she believed that I did it on purpose as one of my many mischievous stunts that have in many instances created a real Rift Valley between us. The devil knows how embarrassed I was. So pressed to relieve myself, I ended up in the nearest bar toilet where I had to pay a cool Sh200 to the watchman.