I never go anywhere without my earphones. Whether I’m taking a leisurely stroll, a jog, or I’m in a mat. So my earphones broke down and I had to go to town to buy new ones. My journey to town was terrible. The walk to the stage, the wait, the bus…

With my earphones, everything is a music video, the little lady of the hood waves, I wave back, almost in slow motion… Our mama mboga who is actually a baba mboga nods his head, I nod back. The cool dude of the block, also on earphones flicks his head with a sharp head raise, I flick back…. and keep my head slightly raised… song playing: Fat Joe, “Nothing can stop me, I’m all the way up”…. And Dj Khaled in the background saying “They don’t want us to win”…

But this time I was bila earphones, eh-eh… how do people walk without music? It was weird hearing baba mboga greeting me as I passed him. “Sema”… I had to stop myself from defaulting to my usual comeback answer.. “Poa sana. Nipe kitunguu moja, nyanya mbili na dhania”

I started noticing things I hadn’t noticed before. The guy with a funny hat, without the hat, now had a new hat… The security guy at the gate asked me for my security fee… Wait, had he been waiting for this opportunity all these months? Our local shoemaker greeted me by name… Ala he knows my name? *Ego boosted*

I got to the stage. Normally, with my earphones, I’d just wait for the next City Hopper and board it regardless of the price to tao… Like a bauss… But this time, since I could hear everything, when the bus fikad the conda says, “tao 40 bob”. I told him “wee bana, leo ni Sato. Bei ni 30 bob”. He says “ingia na 30” almost secretly in my ear like we are doing a drug deal. I can’t believe I was actually pissed at this conda for trying overcharge me. It’s not like I was going to invest the saved 10 bob and grow it into a massive business empire in 5 years. I was probably going to waste it on “choowingum” or those sweets for tatu-tano by the time I got to town.

I sit next to this lady. With my earphones missing, all my senses were heightened. I noticed the perfume she was wearing. Hmm… not bad. Noticed how she gazed in the distance. Someone must have made her very happy… Or she was going somewhere very happy. The glow on her face told it all. I wasn’t going to do small talk with a stranger in the bus so I wondered “what do people normally do?” I looked around. Apart from the earphone people who had that recognisable music video look on their face everyone else was wierd. Random teenager dude checking out a middle aged woman. He saw me see him and got embarrassed. The father seated next time checking out the same lady. Ai.. Then a chic picked up her phone and had a fight with whoever was on the other end of the line… Poor boyfriend… Aki alisomewa. Then the guy for ‘Stikassss’ checks in. “Unaweza weka kwa thermos, fridge…Love thy neighbour as you love thyself”. I looked at my neighbour, glow still on… No hope here.

I pulled out my phone, played Candycrush.. the same hard level I’ve been playing for weeks. Made two attempts, got bored and started going through Facebook, Instagram then finally my phone photo album. Then traffic… Ai bana… This was getting worse by the second.

That’s when I noticed my lady seat-mate’s handbag. IT WAS HUGE. All this time I thought it was part of her hips. I kid you not, now that there was traffic, I thought she was going to chomoa a Bodaboda from in there and offer to give me a lift to town or a Vitz and we use shortcuts. It was getting chilly. She could just have turned that handbag inside out and it’d morph into a small tent complete with a small mattress, bedding and torch. Or at least chomoa knitting needles, a ball of wool and quickly knit me a boshori.