Aki vitu nimeona ( a diary)
1st September 2021
“Taxi Ride in a Rainy City”
“Me,” he told me, his left hand resting on the steering wheel and the other waving to accentuate his point, to show that what he was saying was nearly as important as driving through streets that were being washed by a storm “no politics.”
“Huh, I see,” I replied from the rear seat, drenched from the night’s excursions in a city that had decided to make my last night in it memorable. I looked past his waving hand, past the rapid swinging of the windshield pipers that seemed no match for the pouring of heavens that had flooded half the city, at the red rear lights of other vehicles that were wading through this menace and wondered what sort of discussions their sheltered inhabitants were having.
Dissatisfied by my response, but not dissuaded, he repeated loudly, amid the incessant pattering that threatened to drown his voice, “Ah aha ah, I could never be a politician.”
“You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t lie.”
“Ahaa, I see.”
“Me I don’t lie. I can’t!” he said, shrugging his shoulders and leaving me to decide how he meant it. Did he mean, say, that he had tried to lie, multiple times, and failed? That he was cursed to always say the truth even when he felt the compulsion to say otherwise? Or did he mean that he could not allow himself to lie? That he could not live with himself if he even thought of lying?
“These politicians, everywhere, they lie. In my country, they lie. Here, they lie. I am sure in your country, they lie too. Me no – I study engineering instead. Better maths than politics. But good for you studying international relations…”
***
In the verdant hilly village I grew up in, there was a road that snaked through it, and along which shops, churches, schools, tea-selling centres, and homes had sprung. The road was very steep and a walk to the farmer’s market at the top of the hill was always a perspiration-filled undertaking for me. The road was also very muddy, and when it rained the four buses that traversed the village would be forced to halt their goings-on. Even the trucks buying tea would affix chains to their wheels in an attempt to ascend and most times they would fail, so that the villagers selling at the top of the hill would have to walk down slippery meanderings to the tea centre that was at the bottom of the hill. Every election year, the Member of Parliament would promise to tarmac the road. To even show how keen he was, he would begin pouring some gravel at sporadic parts of the road, up until the elections. The road stayed the same. It was only tarmacked three years ago.
***
By the time we turned towards the street I was alighting on, the rain had waned, and my body had warmed up. Vapor was rising out of my wet clothes and my mind was processing the all too familiar feeling of connection with a stranger who I would probably never meet again. A connection that he too, had come to this land of dreams with plans to support his family. That he too, without knowing, could know that I’d understand what he meant. That he too, by resignedly pointing out the state of affairs, was sad too.
I thanked him: for the ride, for the reminder that we are but bodies wallowing in spaces with ideas and dreams, for his thoughts. As I alighted, he said, in one last attempt to hammer in what he felt needed to change, if it meant through me, “Goodnight brother – Don’t lie!”