The last of the gallants

KiN Stories
By Ted Malanda

The setting was a club in Kilimani, Nairobi. The men, about 20 in number, sat around a long table. Among them were two well-endowed, light skinned women.

In the background, legendary Benga maestro D O Misiani’s rich baritone hummed the tunes of his classic number, Harusi ya MK, crooning about a beauty so bewitching that her teeth were like almasi — gemstones.

The men at the long table weren’t drinking beer. They sipped fiery and expensive spirits — Johnnie Walker or Chivas Regal. And they bought them by the bottle at prices that can keep an entire village of drunks inebriated on chang’aa for months.

In a land where drunks hook dirty flies out of beer glasses using their grubby fingers and sip on contentedly, the men opened their expensive choice whiskies with a flourish and poured tots on the floor in memory of departed spirits. A tot of that stuff, my dear friend, costs a whopping Sh300.

Stylish, expensive, flamboyant — that’s the Luo man. They just kill women, if you know what I mean.

Perhaps that is why while the ‘Lake’ and ‘Mt Kenya’ never see eye to eye during the day, you would never untangle these two communities once darkness sets in. I have, frankly, never met a Luo man who doesn’t have a Kikuyu girlfriend or a Kikuyu man who doesn’t hunger for a lakeside beauty.

One myth that is told about my cousins is that they are violent and maybe so. Luos can kick up one hell of a riot, uproot the damn railway, yell their lungs out and smash a whole city to smithereens in hours. But for all their violence, they never seem to kill anyone. In fact, it’s they who get killed.

The sweet thing about their violence is that when you get into a spot of trouble — say police are harassing you — the only one who will speak for you, even if it means risking his life to do so, is a man from the lake.

Little wonder that Kisumu City is one place where you can whip out your mobile phone and yap away without a care in the world. Thieves know that all it takes is one shout of distress and braves will run to the rescue.

Successful businesses

This is so unlike Nairobi where people walk past while you get garroted in broad daylight or gather to stare impotently. In Kisumu, handbag, mobile phone snatching is outlawed by community order.

But far from the old stereotype, Luo men are not just fun and play – they run successful businesses and invest heavily these days. What’s more, they own homes, too — of course very palatial — in Nairobi and the village as a drive along the Ahero-Kisumu road reveals.

Apparently, the witches who used to kill enterprising young men who built modern houses in the village are all gone. Either that or the youth don’t give a damn anymore.

When you think about it, Luo Nyanza might be dirt poor but it has done pretty well for a semi- desert.

Lifted - The Standard