Locked out, and forced to sleep in a lodging

This past Sunday, after taking out my four-year-old son Neo to a nearby mall, I returned to a big shock waiting for me in the house.

It was the first time in weeks that I had spent time with Neo, so as I held him in my arms, smelling that sweet shampoo his mother always bathes him with, tears rolled down my cheeks.

Neo, who had been squirming in delight in my arms, now held my cheeks in his small palms, and as his mother looked away embarrassed (a grown man weeping at a public space like a mall!), he said with a grave look in his beautiful brown eyes:
“Da-Dee, why a you cry-ink? Who beat you?”

“Life,” I wanted to shout. “Life just beat the crap out of me, dear boy.”

A few months ago, I was happily letting Neo buy or play or drive or ride…whatever he wanted to do in the mall. Now I was encouraging him to stay in the bouncing castle, because every time he popped out, it was for another VR (Virtual Reality) experience – at Sh400 a pop!

Later, just before his mum picked him, feeling guilty that I had only let him have two VR experiences all day, I said, “Neo, would you like your fave Oreo milkshake?”

“I sure would,” my smart son said, “But Mummy said you are now so poor, I shoont waste your money!”

Thanks a million, dear Lora, for making me look like the hero ‘So Poor Man’ to my son!

Getting back to my flat, I found the dreaded giant padlock on my front door.

Remember the failed deejay, who was now the caretaker of Makondo Flats which is where I now live?

I rushed to his crib in the building, and angrily asked why he has locked me out of my flat.

“Look at your lease, Mike,” he said. “It says rent is supposed to be paid on the fifth. Last month you paid it on the 30th. Mkuu Ian told me to lock you out if, this month haulipi by C.O.B.”

“C.O.B is the Crook of a Bastard that I have for a landlord,” I snarled. “Actually, correction – he is the crook, and you are his bastard.”

“Ni sawa,” DJ said, shrugging nonchalantly. “Peleka invoice ya hizo matusi zako kwa Insult Department, ulipwe, ulipe rent, nikufungulie nyumba.”

After being a DJ, a failed DJ, for many moons, verbal abuse for DJ was like water off a duck’s back. Why once, a high young MP had even shot at him in a club for refusing his song request after the club had closed.

 Luckily for DJ, and ‘unfortunately for us tenants,’ as I bitterly told DJ last Sunday, the lead slug had narrowly missed his head (how, when it was such a wide load?), and lodged itself on the roof of the club. The case was later settled out of court, but women ate all of DJ’s settlement share, money he could have used to buy his own equipment, and start his own hustle, instead of club gigs.

Like I have said, DJ is a failed deejay!

But it was my own troubles that occupied my head that day as, instead of my own bed, I went to a ‘Pati Pati Nusu’ boarding-and-lodging to think over my troubles.

A pati pati nusu lodging is called so because they give you half-cut slippers, and of different colours, to ensure you cannot steal them, alongside a tattered towel no client in their right mind would use (better the thin bedsheets as post-shower towels) and a mosquito coil that you’ll need.

Except that the mozzies in my lodge seemed to think I was burning sweet incense!

Not that I could sleep.

Where on earth will I hustle that 20K to cover November rent?

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