Encountering ‘Kibibi’ at my favourite pub

I’m at this most respected drinking and eating open-air outfit in our side of the Dar City. Of course, I won’t divulge the outfit’s business name lest I get accused of doing PR for them.

Suffice it to say it’s a nice place with minimum noise—you don’t need to walk away 200 metres to have a conversation on your mobile.

With me is this old friend, Ali Mack. The guy, a weather-beaten scribe and I, usually meet on Saturdays to exchange notes on this and that, including his series of conquests—real and imagined—in the dating scene. Mack is a typical sufferer of the delayed teenager syndrome.

“I like asking chicks for a date, yet when we agree on a date, I start praying she’ll get a reason to cancel it…that she calls to say she can’t make it,” he says as he checks out his handset. Most likely to see what chick is SMS-ing to cancel or confirm a date. Or, to ask for hela ya vocha. Ahem!

“Why do you pray for date cancellations?” I ask.

“I dread the likely prospect of failing to do anything with her and yet, spending at least two-day’s pay for no reason,” says the dirty old man.

As we chat, a lady who has just dropped off a car at the parking lot passes not very far from where we’re seated. Her pretty face intrigues me, for she looks like someone familiar. Then it clicks! She must be Kibibi (real name Getrude Mwita), her of the Lulu movie series fame, I tell myself.

“That’s Kibibi, the Huba actress, I bet,” I say to Mack.

“I think so too—and she’s my kind of girl!” says Mack.

Come the moment for me to visit the washrooms (they’ve decent washrooms here) and as I pass by “Kibibi’s” table I stop over and greet her and her two tablemates, as gentlemanly as I could. Then I ask if she were the famous Huba actress who plays Kibibi.

“No, mzee wangu, but your question doesn’t surprise me because I get it from many other people,” she responds in a very polite tone. I proceed to the washrooms.

On my way back, I order her table a round. No big deal, though—she was the only one having a beer; her friends were taking sodas.

As I leave them, I say to her, jocularly: “Take note, Kibibi, I’m not even asking for your phone number…I’m an innocent and decent old fellow.”

That provokes laughter from all of the three women, and they say, almost in unison, “Please get the number, feel free, mzee.”

I say next time and dash back to Mack who, when I tell him the lady we concluded was the famous actress was just a Kibibi look-alike he says:

“Fine, but I’m sure you took down her phone number.”

“No, of course—why should I?” I say.

“You’re the most useless man in the world,” he says with a poker face.