By Idler-in-Chief
I sinned on Tuesday but let me confess before I get burnt. You see, I boarded a Manyanga.
For the uninitiated, a Manyanga is not a fruit, though its name sounds edible.
It is a musical torture chamber disguised as a matatu, designed to remind aging bones like mine that the world no longer belongs to us but to a generation identified by the 26th letter of the English alphabet.
I am referring to a generation that will impeach you if you interfere with their earphones, ring lights, and mysterious dances where the hips move east while the brain faces west.
I had sworn, many years ago, that I would never board a Manyanga after one DJ crammed the entire works of Diamond Platnumz, Alikiba, and Embarambamba into five minutes of continuous thunder that nearly relocated my kidneys to my armpits.
But on Tuesday, the sun of Nyagenke roasted me alive on the Nyagenke Road, turning my bald head into a fried egg on a frying pan.
I was waiting for a humble 14-seater matatu, the type that plays only one gospel cassette from 1997.
Unfortunately, those vehicles have mastered the art of zooming past me as though I owe them fare from last year.
One after another, they hissed past me, drivers waving hands that said: “Idler-in-Chief, your time on earth is short.”
Hunger was chewing my intestines, the feet were weak and my wallet was weaker from an economy that has not favoured me to access the compound currently inhabited by the retired spokesman of hasoras for purse resuscitation.
So when a Manyanga screeched to a stop, its body covered in graffiti of lions, half-naked cartoon women, and Bible verses that contradicted each other, I surrendered my soul.
The moment I stepped inside, the music slapped me across the face and I nearly staggered back out, but the hash tag bodies harshly squeezed me forward.
At the door, the bassline was already trying to rearrange my dental formula and by the time I reached the back seat, where they assured me there was “space, mzae”, the speakers were so loud I was convinced my ancestors could also hear them down there where they went to plant potatoes.
That was when WiFi babies stared at me as if I had climbed in with a walking stick and a porcupine and I knew I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong company.
I wanted to tell them that until recently noses like mine were fashionable, and the Nyagenkeans used them to smell politricks from a mile away, but no one would have heard me over the thunderous noise.
At the next stop, a tibiim looking mother entered with her son and she fought her way to the back, sat near me, and immediately regretted her life choices.
She was torn between covering her ears and covering her son’s, and chose to stretch her arms like a human windmill, sometimes plugging her ears, sometimes his, sometimes missing both and covering my head by mistake, a mistake I was okay with.
Meanwhile, the fellow mortals in the Manyanga were not suffering but thriving as they danced on their seats, some stretching their tongues out like chameleons and snapping videos live on TigTog.
Every boom of the bass made them nod as though in agreement with a prophet and by the time I alighted, I had not picked a single word of the music.
Even as I submit this article, I do not know if they were singing about love, heartbreak, or the rising cost of tomatoes.
All I know is that noise had murdered the message, and the TigTog generation had danced as if it was their wedding.
May the Manyangas of this land learn that bass is not vitamin, volume is not wisdom, and not every passenger wants their intestines rearranged to the beat of Gengetone.
See you next week if the guys don’t decide to obtain my number and send me unsolicited greetings.
-babahezel@gmail.com