Water is okay with her till you step in

I’m at this decent eating and drinking establishment. Two old buddies with whom I’ve been chatting have left, leaving me alone to enjoy my little warm Castros as I go over weekend papers that I’m carrying.

I’m so engrossed in my papers, that I don’t notice the arrival of a dark complexioned lady who proceeds to occupy the table quite near mine.

It’s certain she chose the table because it’s close to a beam that’s fixed with sockets from which she can recharge her two handsets.

You all know what’s going on in Bongo now—the power shedding thing—in which you wake up in the morning and find your phone power indicator is down to a mere 20 percent!

And Tanesco has done their thing—wamefanya mambo yao.

I’m a typical social animal and I soon say hi to the lone lady who’s enjoying a drink of water from a one-litre bottle. She says hi back, a response coloured by a wide smile that enables you to notice she has a diastema. That’s mwanya in Kiswahili. I can chat with her from where I’m seated, but I consider that not sociable enough. I ask her if she expecting someone.

“No; I’m here on my own, waiting for my lunch which is presently being prepared as I charge my handsets and chat,” she says.

Being from “old school” social upbringing, I only decamp from my table to join her after asking whether that would be okay. And she said it’s okay.

I learn that the lady (call her Atuganile, in short, Atu) is from a southern region whose women, it’s said, are so tough they don’t stomach nonsense, even from husbands!

She and I are soon familiar with each other like we’ve known one another since Adam.

“The father of my daughter, who’s now 12, left me ostensibly because his relatives wanted him to get a wife from his district,” Atu tells me in the course of our conversation.

“Was that a genuine reason for him to leave you?” I ask the lady, who I learn is a BA graduate.

“I don’t think so…no real man dumps a woman he loves because of his conservative parents,” she argues. I say I agree with her fully—and I mean it.

Her food finally lands before her, and she invites me to wash my hands first so that we share it. I decline because I’m already full.

She’s half way through her meal when I tell her I should leave to sit at some other part of the bar to watch a soccer match that’s about to start.

Before standing up to say bye, I ask her if she could have something different from water on my bill and she says she’ll appreciate it.

I call a mhudumu and when Atu is asked what she’ll have, she says: “I’ll have a Savanna.”

I curse silently, because Savanna will eat into my wallet a whopping Sh4,500 while I had foolishly imagined she’d order a soda!