When a youngster sees a competitor in WM!

There’s a new barmaid in this neighbourhood pub that I frequent due to its convenience, as it is near the place my mini-clan and I call, typically, kwetu.

By the way, Wabongo are very peculiar people, thanks to Ujamaa, our brand of African Socialism, which dictates that what’s yours is actually ours!

Aliens to Bongo become wide-eyed when, say, Wa Muyanza, tells one, Please welcome to our place.

Instead of that, please welcome me to my place. Karibu kwetu instead of Karibu kwangu!

I’m digressing. So this fresh mhudumu—call her Helen—is the one who leads me to a vacant table, the type you use while seated on a stool.

Most of the other wahudumu are either busy chatting and drinking with customers or watching an ongoing Afcon match.

The ebony-black Helen is as petite as they come. You may easily confuse her with a wayward primary schoolgirl who’s at the bar by mistake. She’s wearing long, artificially woven hair running down her back to well below her knees.

I give her my order. A couple of minutes later, there’s before me a Kasichana and a litre of bottled water.

I’m not very keen on the match on the TV screen. Why, like a majority of my compatriots, I lost interest in the Afcon goings-on after Taifa Stars frustrated Wabongo on January 21 by failing to defend their 12th minute goal, allowing the Zambians to equalise one minute to the final whistle!

Helen, who reveals to me she’s a Simba Sports Club fan, claims she attributed our boys’ failure to whip Zambia to Chama, who made sure his country messed up our chances for Afcon glory because back in Dar, “we” had kicked him out of Msimbazi! Ha!

Whenever she’s free from serving anyone, she comes to my table to ensure I’m not missing anything. Her perpetual smile is disarming, and I feel I owe her a drink, so I tell her to have something on my bill. She gets herself a Sere Laiti.

I soon note that when Helen isn’t spending her idle moments with me, she’s at a table occupied by two young fellows that are familiar to me since we share a neighbourhood. Call them Omi and Joe.

By the time I feel I should be leaving, Helen is having a second bottle courtesy of my wallet, which is okay, by the way. You see, I’m not always as miserly as I may appear.

At one point, when Helen is serving others, Joe walks up to me and whispers, “Mzee, be afraid of Helen!”

Why, I ask, and he replies, “She is not well."

We all know what that means. It’s a way of warning me that Helen is HIV-positive. Anao!

“What has that to do with me?” I asked Joe.

“Well, I can see you’re getting too close,” he says, wearing a porker face.

Trust crooked Joe! He’s not aware Helen has already confided to me he’s her boyfriend!