By the Idler-in-Chief
Unknown to you, my grandson had 32 spikes in his mouth when Tokyo branded trousers became a big thing in Nyagenke and beyond, in the late 1990s.
By spikes I mean teeth though honestly, one needed real spikes to defend himself from the jealous stares that followed anyone wearing the fabulous Tokyo.
Sufficiently wide to host a goat auction ahead of Xmas, the trousers were elegant enough to make a Nyagenke chap believe that a bird carrying him after eating honey in the moon in Japan had touched down at Nyagenke Bodaboda and Allied Locomotives International Airport.
You don’t need to ask AI if any Nyagenkean had ever been to Tokyo, and if it’s true that most of those trousers were stitched by the then (un)reliable city tailors.
Once the word Tokyo was embroidered on the pocket, the garment became a direct ticket to adulthood, romance, and confusion.
Young men like the grandson of this certified Idler-in-Chief plotted, begged, borrowed and occasionally lied just to own one.
Come tea bonus season, fathers rewarded sons with Tokyos the way kings once handed out swords.
In answer, the emerging Nyagenkeans strutted through village walkways with their shirts firmly tucked in, not for neatness but to make sure that the writing ‘TOKYO’ greeted all.
One day, Manengo tucked in his shirt and oversized coat, until he looked like a human scarecrow enveloped in a tent.
The Nyagenkeans gathered, pointing fingers and laughing, and up to this day, his “tuck-in” is told and retold at Nyagenke events including weddings and campaign rallies whenever humour is needed.
This story was nearly eclipsed that time when one fellow graduated from bachelorhood by accident, simply because a girl from yonder mistook his wide-legged Tokyo for a ticket to Tokyo itself.
She married him, expecting sushi and skyscrapers, only to find herself in the hinterland of Nyagenke where the tallest building was the tea buying centre, where I served as chairman and continue to hold the same portfolio as I pour the millet on this column.
I’m telling you this in 2025 and the Nyagenke tea grower has been told his bonus will be peanuts, but not the groundnuts sold in paper cones.
It will be tiny, dry peanuts without salt, the kind you bite and regret.
Meanwhile, Fooliza and tens of credit apps are already waiting with open mouths, ready to swallow the bonus before it even lands.
Turns out that while in the 1990s a father rewarded his son shiny Tokyo trousers, now, it might be an M-besa message reading, “Your Fooliza repayment has been successful.”
Instead of tucking in shirts to display Tokyo, today’s youth tuck in their dignity to hide the SMS reminders of overdue loans.
Instead of swaying like bells in wide trousers, Gen Z now sway under the weight of mobile debts.
One young man told me yesterday, “Dad wore Tokyo. I wear Fooliza. Life has been relegated.”
And indeed, the replica Tokyos now selling online at 3,000 bob are beyond reach, and Nyagenke youth have resorted to rotating one pair of jeans from Christmas to Easter.
When they dance live on TigTog in the hope of an extra coin, the trousers don’t flash with authority but creak with warning of leaving them naked.
From where I’m X’ing, if not tweeting, if we conquered fashion with fabric, our today’s youth may conquer it with overdrafts.
After all, in Nyagenke, prestige has never been about what you truly own, but what you can make people believe.
So if you see a boy swaggering in the market with a phone whose cost is equivalent to ten goats in hand, do not laugh. That is the modern Tokyo.
The only difference is that instead of a label on the pocket, there is a negative M-besa balance in the phone.
And that, ladies and gentlefish, is how style evolves in our Nyagenke: from trousers of fabric to trousers of finance.
-babahezel@gmail.com