He was strolling on a sidewalk near the Nyayo National Stadium. No, let me rephrase that. The cocky fellow was ‘bouncing’.
Not a day older than 17, he was clad in a pair of jeans so tight fitting he must have smeared them with lubricating oil before engaging in gymnastics to navigate his feet into those skintight things.
He wore a sleeveless shirt, a series of colourful chains around his chest and funky canvas shoes.
His hands were thrust into the pockets of his pants, one of which had a gadget from which wires sprung and snaked into his ears, not far from his wild looking haircut.
The young fella was handsome in an almost delicate way, and he knew it. Occasionally, he would get overwhelmed by his own beauty and dance a little.
But mostly, he strutted like a jogoo, the one that crows for no apparent reason, and then kicks stylishly after the nearest hen.
I looked at him and sighed with the helplessness of old age, and not without a little envy.
He didn’t seem to have a care in the world, which in his view, lay prostrate before him, begging to be conquered.
I closed my eyes briefly and said a silent prayer to the gods of virgins and to the troubled souls of mothers and fathers of teenage girls navigating the slippery path of puberty and adolescence.
History of murder
Watching him from my window in the traffic jam, I knew without a shred of doubt that if I had a teenage daughter, and I saw that rascal ‘bouncing’ past my gate or even giving my girl a suggestive look, I would hurriedly invest in bows and poisoned arrows.
I would fling in a wild, madly barking mongrel as well, stick a beehive full of angry bees on her bedroom window and hire a watchman with a family history of murder. Then I would fatten my wife and take her for karate lessons.
Silly teenage hormones
But I still fear that handsome son of a b***h (pardon the pun) would have ‘spoilt’ my daughter; that he would have sent her silly teenage hormones racing like a piki piki and made her start thinking about weddings and cute babies at 15.
Her school grades would plummet. Then she would discover a sudden love for the church choir, group discussions, camping and many other healthy activities that would somehow take her away from home all weekends and miraculously deliver her into a maternity ward before her 16th birthday.
I knew in my heart that if I had warned her, at the pain of death, to leave Pablo, or Swaleh, or Rama (such boys always have names like that), she would have told me to dive into River Khalaba.
If I had beseeched her to like the dull, boring but diligent boy in spectacles next door instead, whom I know will become a rich surgeon one day, she would have spat in my face.
Fast forward to 2030 and I could, in my mind’s eye, see my troubled daughter ‘saved’ and depressed because her Pablo husband was chasing everything in a skirt, including the pretty airhead down the street diluting the genes of the dull, diligent boy in spectacles who became a rich surgeon.
But then, such is life; a circus! Have a great year folks.