Adulting is serious. I am often mocking Joweria that adulting got her by the ponytail. But it is hard to dodge adulting. My lovely friend Fridah lost a brother, and I had to make it to the vigil. I must confess that nothing flows like communal food.
I have never eaten bad communal food. The magic could be in the hands and the limited options. Because the best rice I eat is always at some lumbe.
As I ate my rice, the drunkards at the vigil started gathering. The fire had gone out. The drunkards insisted that this could never happen in their presence. In an act of ‘solida’, they were able to re-flame the bonfire. Then the stories started. That is when I learnt that the Oxford dictionary of ‘luyaye’ had been updated. Mbu these days if someone says ‘oyo Rosie tamalayo’ it simply means ‘Rosie will not be able to help.’ Early this year, I fired some of my gamba n’ogus for not being able to kumalayo. I also got to learn that when someone says, ‘mpaku matala’, it is some form of luseke.
As I left the vigil, the passage of time started echoing in my head. What is time? Not so long, I was young. I judged my parents and adults harshly. I thought they had lazy ideas, and someone needed to hold them accountable. I thought death was a distant thing, something that happened to old people. Here I was, and now I am expected to show up at vigils. I belong to tens of wedding groups. I wondered; ‘will the younger generation judge me harshly?’ Will they understand that this adulting comes with more things?
Again, what is time? In Europe, time is fixed. You must fit within the time. Yet, back home, time is something we controlled, something we could mend and mould as we saw fit.
When my sister says let us meet at 9am, that 9am could be 10am, or 11am and that depends on many things.
It depends on the weather, on how she wakes up, on whether her dog is swaying its tail the right way. It was not the case in Berlin or Amsterdam. Time was this hard fix, the kind where being on time is being late.
But could one ever be late in life? I wondered. You know the 30s are the most anxious of years. I call them the pivoting years. It is like the one last chance to be something in life. You know, in the 20s, you are allowed to kugezesa. You date different people, you try different places, you even taste different hangovers.
You know the hangover of a beer is not the same as that of a spirit, worse, a fake spirit. By the way, fake spirits are on a serious roll in this town. A friend recently had the most expensive hangover. Mbu he went to this fancy place. The first bottle was ka-sure, but the second bottle, that is when the game was played. Anyway, again time should have taught him that nothing beats enturire, obushera, omubisi, our local gems. But my friend will say mbu njogeza lu-stingy.
But people, what is time? Kiteezi happened, fast forward, Kisaka and Luyimbazi were gone with it. What is time? We have spent a year waiting for Bebe Cool’s Break the Chain album. I do argue friends and humble subjects that time is the scale that weighs us all.
Regardless of what choices you make, directions you take, time will still weigh you. And time will always have a case against you. You can never win against time.
The only way to win against time is to checkmate it. You must have a stronger case against it.
A case that says, time as much as you rush, as much as you are like the wind, I did something with you. I lived unapologetically.
Because what is life if one gets to their 40s and they do not know what it means to say ‘No’ to a traffic officer? What is life if you have never woken up on a random day and chosen to go to a random place? No, I am not saying that you should start organising your own version of Diddy parties. You know some friends in the 40s start to play catch-up. They think money can buy back time. I do not think so people. Money cannot buy back the fact that when people skinny-dipped in their 20s, you chose to work on that Excel template that your boss rubbished the next day. Time is about bold living every day. You must be as bold with life as MK’s X tweets.
If you got to a function, kusiiba the mere, pack that food. If you need someone’s number, ask for it. You know that surge of energy that hits people just before they die. That promise of recovery, that is all the boldness that was never used. As time uses you, use it. Use people, use places. You are here to be used (not misused). Be something, the stone is rolling, the passage of time is real. You are a rolling stone, but you can be alive in the roll. Kati people are about to say mbu nfusse motivational speaker. No, there is a better word, I am now a therapist or clinical psychologist. On another note, Boss Baby, since when do you do foot massage alone? I will send King Saha to tell you to stop eating life alone.
X: @ortegatalks
