Today... just out of curiosity, you had asked ndugu Esaya to divert to this good old place
It has been long since you visited this expansive, open-air drinking and eating outfit along the Mwai Kibaki Road, which was at one time the talk of this upmarket part of Dar City.
It was the place to be for the who’s who in “the system”, or so it was rumoured.
When beer was being sold at Sh1,500 elsewhere, here you paid a whopping Sh2,500, and nobody complained. Why, here you stood a good chance of making connections with individuals who mattered in the public and the private sectors. Watu wa maana.
The good thing about being a media man is that it’s easy for you to hobnob with men of means because there’s this notion that we’re significant.
Yeah, fellows who can make it possible for people to get their views, true or false, published.
That’s why you, the nobody that you’ve always been, were able to share a table with drinkers who were significant in politics and big business.
Some of them would even give you detailed tips on what they believed would make big, front-page stories.
Some had the nerve to even suggest the headline for the story “they gave you!”
Things have changed over time, as they always do with most drinking establishments. This one, one can say, has degenerated to a shell of its old self.
The infrastructure is still there, but lacking is the big number of patrons that had characterised this place. There’s just a customer here and a customer there.
Today, just out of curiosity, you had asked your ndugu, Esaya, to instruct our driver to divert to this good old place.
The proprietor (call him Gabby) is a long-time buddy of Esaya and is very excited to see our trio that included your better half.
Gabby is busy in the kitchen doing whatever he’s doing, and when he notices our arrival, he rushes to welcome us.
He leads us to a table he proudly calls the VIP table, meant for special patrons like us (ha!). When Esaya asks where the attendants are, Gabby says it’ll be his pleasure to serve us himself.
We reject that because, as Esaya states with insistence, Gabby must be one of us at the VIP table, not our attendant.
“Okay,” agrees Gabby, who shouts a name. A guy who must be thirty or thereabouts comes over and takes our orders.
Within minutes, he’s back with our drinks, a Sere Laiti for Esaya, a Grand Malt for Mama, a Kilimanjaro for Gabby and a Castro Laiti for you.
The waiter hasn’t brought a glass for any of us, and Esaya is mad about this and makes it known to Gabby how disappointed he is.
You’re not, because you prefer taking your beer straight from the bottle.
But hang on! You also get disappointed because you’ve been served with a cold beer, which you don’t touch.
Esaya tells Gabby to please get us another attendant. “This one is incompetent, hafai!” he barks.
“But he’s the best, he’s the supervisor…the others are even more incompetent,” says Gabby with a grin.
“Let’s have another, however incompetent,” insists Esaya, adding, “By the way, where are all those girls who used to serve us here?”
