The Mamoth Experience…

There is this morning I vividly remember.. Just like any normal chilly morning, I had my heavy trench hanging loosely from the scarcely meat-populated shoulders. There was scanty mist hovering above the sleeping village area, a result of which everyone looked like smokers when they opened their mouths to talk. I hurried to the bus stop, and got there just as the bus was about to fill up..

“Fifty .. Fifty Tao….”  The touts call out. I curse, when the fare is 70 bob am usually safe, but when it’s 50, am late as hell.

I ease my way into the filling up shack, take a quick sweep around and spot two vacant seats. The first one is right below my nose, and the dude sited on the immediate next one looks like a reformed marijuana partaker who just realized he has a deep urge for Cannabis sativa. The eyes looked more tomato than the Liverpool jersey he was wearing, and I managed to see a weird tremble on his left hand, while surprisingly his right was at ease.

The day was still young, I did not deserve to face such turmoil, so I snubbed the seat despite the tout shouting “Kalia hiyo boss”  (Sit on that one boss).

I made my way to the next vacant seat, and behold, there sat this very new looking face, shinning a beam of light unto all humanity, it must have been the face of a heaven’s ambassador to earth. I shook my head, wondering why all the men in the bus had ignored that one seat, looked up and smiled, ‘Oooh well, you were saving it for me…!’

I settled down beside her, and noticed something funny, the large distance between me and the face. There was some mass, a large mass of meat spread out at the point she was seated on, which was pushing my pelvis area more to the outside of my seat. I didn’t mind the mass, since I always occupy half the seat anyway, it didn’t hurt sharing. The bus took off, and I minded my own business, put on my headphones and looked up, thinking about absolutely nothing, but trying hard enough to wear and intelligent look. I allowed my mind to wander away, at times throwing glances to my side pretending to watch the trees fly past us.

Somewhere between me thinking about the big avocado tree sited at our roadside in the village, and trying to calculate which would be cheaper between cutting timber off it or painting it Rastafarian colors to make a tourist attraction,  the lady tapped my shoulder with a hand which is now ranked somewhere in the top 2 of the “Softest hands” category on “Wamugi yellow element” competition. She also beamed this smile, I guess the kind which can also ‘remove a snake from the cave’.

“Am alighting in the next stop please..” Ooh the voice, it would be a great injustice attempting to use any of the currently existing adjectives to describe it. It was somewhere above perfect, and the courtesy in the voice made me picture a voice only comparable to a Jeep Wrangler Hard-rock.

Like any of the other men who were brought up in the village at the slopes of the aberdares, I shone back an almost similar but obviously exaggerated smile, held my back pack closer to my chest and moved my legs slightly to the left without getting on my feet (something I really regret till today), to give her way.

What followed was really a moment of madness for the son of Gichuri and Wambui.

My once crush now turned foe attempted two quick unsuccessful take offs, landing back on the seat on both occasions with a silent but high-impacting thud. She bit her lower lip, held onto the front seat and heaved once more, a slight groan escaping her tightly shut mouth. A few droplets of perspiration formed on her forehead, and a vein wriggled from her hairline to the top of her nose. These were clear signs of a great battle, which I was quite reluctant to help in. By now the bus was quickly approaching her bus stop, and she suddenly became desperate.

One last pull and push (not really sure which one), and all the mass was miraculously pulled out of the seat, almost all of which threw an unimaginable amount of force on my back, I felt my back pack leave my hands, and in an attempt to hold onto it, the once innocent lady turned mammoth unknowingly pushed me off my seat with the mass of meat slightly below her waist, and sent me scampering on the seats opposite ours, where I landed on two guys who looked like ex-convicts.

There was a sharp pain somewhere near my groin, after digging into one of the guys knees with my thighs (damn those men who sit in matatus legs widely spread like they are coming from getting the rite of passage). The bus had reached the stop, and the driver had to apply emergency brakes, which now sent my gonads into direct contact with the knees.  

"Oooohh Crap..!" 

In a split second I passed out then back on, I saw the legendary flash of light, and behold there was Wanguni my late grandmother, shining at me that smile which lives in my memory.

"Heeey Granny.. long time!" i swear i can remember me tell her.

 “My grandson, you are just imagining me, your time is not yet…” she replied.

Just the way she had appeared, she vanished and I was back on the laps of my two ex-convict friends. The pain also went away, and in its place was a painful embarrassment, spreading from my toes to the last hairs of my head.

“Sorry young boy…” The man whose knee was responsible for my heavenly tour bellowed, his teeth shouting to me that he most probably had kale the previous night. 

'Did he just call me... wait a minute'.... 'What does he think I am? wait a minute...' My head was on overdrive, burning hot, but with one arm, his weaker arm, he lifted me from the weirdly smelling world unto my feet, oblivious to the little brain curses leveled towards him.

I was angry at how easily he managed to put me back on my feet, and as I settled back to my seat to check for any broken bones, I saw the mammoth wriggling its way to the bus door and for the trillionth time I cursed.

Dear family, plans are now in place for the son of the slopes to try and increase in mass, and everyone from distant cousins to future in-laws should take part in this tough and with high chances of failure exercise. This kind of occurrence sends a very bad picture about the kind of eating that really goes on in the slopes of the abeerdares, but it has been strongly suggested and agreed that the son of Gichuri should not at any one time be used as the face of the village.