In Kenya you can ignore your teeth but never your underwear

I had two accidents last month.

No, I wasn’t driving. In fact, it was an early morning ride to work and shockingly, I found no reason to fault the matatu crew, apart from their noisy contraption of a radio making lewd noise in the name of music.

In both instances, some rascal rammed us from the rear (Okay, I didn’t mean it to come out that way, but you get my point). One second I was buried deep in my newspaper to avoid eye contact with my neighbour’s thighs, which were exposed, thanks to those tiny belts called skirts that women wear these days.

Then bang! and my, uh, 21-carat, gold rimmed spectacles flew off my face.

In the first accident, a woman shrieked and went hysterical. In the second, a young man jerked off the back-seat and bolted, but stopped when he discovered he was in a matatu and not on a racing track.

Obviously, the fact that I am writing this means I didn’t die or suffer serious injury. Haters will find that a bit odd because I have not been to church for a while. But principally because the Son of Man died for sinful idiots like myself, his father, Jehovah, was doing what the youth would call ‘kukaa radar’.

As a result, the only misfortune I suffered was my spectacles flying off my face.

Somebody say Amen.

The shrieking young lady didn’t do too well though. She suffered a small cut that bled profusely causing her to go into shock. We were therefore, compelled to spread her out beside the road and fan her, which is just about the only thing Kenyans know about first aid.

I was hoping she might need the kiss of life, whereupon I would have stepped forward gallantly and become her knight in shining armour. Maybe exchange phone numbers and begin something that would culminate in those ridiculous weddings we see on TV – naturally after extorting friends and relatives through forced harambees in dingy pubs.

You must be wondering what all this has to do with not brushing your teeth but wearing nice, fresh underwear.

Just imagine for one second that the Father of the Son of Man was not ‘sitting radar’, maybe he was distracted by ISIS goons beheading someone somewhere. What would have happened is that something more important than spectacles would have flown off my face. Teeth; maybe a jaw. Maybe my whole damn head.

Can you hear the sirens? Can you see me and that shrieking young lady getting wheeled into the ambulance?

Now let the drama begin. The nurses, after collecting my teeth and stuffing them back into their sockets after cleaning them up with cotton wool and methylated spirit, would decide to undress us. The perverts!

Next thing you know, they would be suppressing giggles and asking themselves, “Ngai! This man has nice spectacles but stuffs his fundamendos in torn, orange coloured rags?”

So there you have it. You had better breathe hydrogen sulphide fumes into a nurse’s face, but don’t you dare get caught at Casualty in dodgy underwear.

Ted Malanda is a writer and editor with the Standard Group