The Curse of living on ground floor

There is a group of individuals the government should recognize alongside MauMau veterans and slot them either for compensation or tax exemption.  These are individuals that are or have ever lived on the ground floor of a flat in this city.

There are things that happen to you in this city when you live on ground floor – things that are beyond your control and you just look and say, “Ya Mungu ni mengi, ya kuku ndio mayai.” 

You can imagine those days you are tired and just thinking about things that confuse you more like the significance of the standard gauge railway to your individual income levels, things like whether Raila is too old to run for presidency, things like was it too early for Southern Sudan to separate from the larger Sudan, What does Africa stand to gain or lose with a Trump or Hillary presidency, then from nowhere you just hear someone shouting, “Maaaare, mare, mare, mare” and then some house-help a floor up is sent to call in the guy over the balcony.

When the guy comes in, the barter trade happens outside your door and for some reason the Mare Mare guy never talks in a low tone. You will find yourself listening into their stories and how the guy is even trying to ‘put into his box’ someone’s mboch or wife and that silly laughter the victims give as they try to brush the vibes away. During this session your hunger pangs are sort of aroused and you just decide to walk lazily into the kitchen to prepare something.

Maybe you were listening to some music and you decide to increase the volume so that you can still listen and sing along while cooking. That is the time the guy who sharpens knives decides to show up and sets his monocycle right in front of your door. All the neighbors from the other floors come down in numbers to have their knives sharpened as they catch up with their friends. They make noise as if to tell you there is need to go upstairs next time you are looking for a house.

You finally manage to make your food and bring it on the table. You say your silent prayer or even assume you prayed while cooking and fill your plate right away. The time you lift the first spoon or handful, you hear a slight knock on the door – you ignore the knock. Somehow the other person persists to knock one more time and you decide to take them serious, so you stand half-heartedly and pace lazily towards the door. All the time, the doors on ground floor are rusty and hard to open (I don’t know why). You finally open the door to meet some lady with about three kids the youngest of them on her back.

“Hapa ni kwa mama Bryo?” She asks.

You realize even in the spirit of Nyumba kumi initiative you know not of any Mama Bryo. Somehow you try to think.

“Alizaa mtoto juzi” she adds to aid your memory.

Still you can’t you decipher a Mama Bryo. You often leave this place before sunrise and are back long after sunset.

You decide to forward her to the next house to try her luck.

As she leaves you walk back to your food and half way, you hear another knock on the door. You go back to open and this time it’s the caretaker. He tells you the pump is not able to pump water to the guys on other floors so they will come down to draw water from the tap next to your door – some more noise is coming.

Then he adds that the guys who collect garbage have missed to pass by so probably it will have to wait till the next week’s collection day – meaning all the garbage from all the other floors will remain on ground floor for a week!  Why won’t you wish for Jesus’ second coming at this point?

You don’t even answer him except a mechanical nod of your head in agreement. At this point you feel like telling God politely, "Hey, we need to talk."

Your food is now cold but you must eat.

You finish eating your food and decide to stand outside to be ‘beaten by the wind’ a little. While you are standing outside your door, there is a happy kid on some floor up. The parents have bought him soda and he is playing with it on the balcony. Somehow I think it’s the work of the devil or something, he decides to tort a little soda on your promotional t-shirt from the company you work for. Something inside you asks you to look up and your face meets a happy creature with about two teeth missing on his upper gum, smiling at you and then ducks into their house after you visualize a threat to them.

So you decide to just get your clothes off from the line and get back inside. Another shock hits you when you realize those clothes you paid Mama wa nguo to wash have been discolored multiple times by some neighbors on the floors up there who also shared your co-curricular intentions of having their clothes washed on the same day.

Before you can register your anger properly and even beat yourself for choosing to stay on ground floor, some mboch up there is cleaning and now just doing her final touches with the balcony. You just notice some tea-colored water gushing out of that ka-drainage pipe peeping above your door like a security camera and spurting on the concrete floor depositing on the ground some remains of sukuma wiki, rice grains, burnt out match sticks, buttons and other things that you can’t even identify. You just jump over your slippers at the door that have already fallen victim to this instant flood.

You enter your house and switch on the TV and there is poor signal – then you realize that your Gotv antennae must have been messed up by the neighbor’s kids playing on the top most floor. You decide to go and sleep so that maybe Jesus will visit you and whisper to you in a still voice while in your trance, the reason why you are going through this predicament and which sins particularly you need to repent and change your ways so that you can receive his blessings both in the country side and in the city, according to his word…

Alenga Torosterdt.