Separate rooms? But I bought you meat and beer!

By TONY MASIKONDE

Long time ago in the days of our forefathers, barter trade was the way to conduct business.

If one trader had beads and another had goats, all they needed to figure out is the exchange rate and business would be booming. Once that initiation equation was put in place, everything else pretty fell in place.

But if you thought that barter is dead, you are dead wrong!

A pal of mine called Eustace, a distinguished counsel, called me on a Sunday afternoon two moons ago raving mad.

“Tony, I need to talk to you! Where can we meet?” he yelled on the phone.

The beauty of being men is that if a man says I want us to talk, its either business or business. But when a woman tells you as a man, I want us to talk… be very afraid.

for sale

“Let’s meet at Brew Bistro since I know you recently won a case so you can even buy a case of beer,” I teased, hoping to cheer him up.

“That is a superb venue, as I’m at Kimende, coming up.”

“Kimende?” I asked

“Yes” he answered sharply.

“You have gone to check out those properties on sale at the shores of Lake Naivasha?” I probed gently hoping not to attract a backlash.

“Look, are we meeting or not?” he snapped.

“We are,” I hissed back not happy that he was now controlling the conversation.

“Then wait for me at Brew Bistro, you can order a whole barrel and take a bath if you so wish,” he said and the phone went dead.

Like many seemingly successive lawyers, he drives a European car and in half an hour, he was narrating the cause of his foul mood.

Rendezvous

Apparently, there was this chick he had been seeing for a couple of weeks. To ensure he eliminated hopeless competition from other men, he showered the girl with expensive presents. She would ask for money for the salon but though she rarely ventured beyond Nairobi’s Tom Mboya Street when it came to hair matters, the money she asked for suggested she did her hair at an upmarket salon at Westgate Shopping Mall.

But the good lawyer knew a good investment when he saw one. They had already chalked up several coffee dates when Eustace suggested they could try an out of town rendezvous.

The girl was quite supportive of the idea and that night, Eustace went home whistling in happiness after their date like a hand cart pusher who had just bonyezad a pick up. 

So on the material day, Eustace hooked up with the chick and off they drove.

After a bit of sight-seeing around Lake Naivasha, they went for dinner and Eustace was in high spirits as he hummed the song Tonight is gonna be a good night by Black Eyed Peas.

I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night…he went on, and on.

However, on reaching the room, the girl expressed shock that Eustace had just booked one room instead of two.

“Why would I book two rooms? For what baby?” he stammered with temper rising and the temperature in the groin area steadily rising.

To cut a long story short, his expectations for the night were not met. He could not understand it. Just what the girl was making of all those gifts and money he was giving her was suddenly a kitendawili. There is nothing for free, okay?

As we spoke sipping beer on Ngong’ Road, he had left her in Naivasha, still in the room, with just Sh500 to find her way to the city.

She is one of a kind that is giving the modern barter trade a bad name!