FRIENDS AND TROUBLE

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 2 comments

A Saturday ago some old time friends decided to pop in on my crib for a meet up. Completely random. Without an invite giving me a feeling of intrusion of privacy. See, it was Saturday and on Friday I had been to an event up to 11, then came home, took a shower and got down to work. Writing and designing in between. I slept at 9 in the morning planning to wake up somewhere between 3 and 4. I am a night owl completely. My phone woke me up at around 11 in the morning. They were in the neighbourhood on the way to my crib. I told them hell no, I have just got to bed, but they insisted.   

In 10 minutes they were knocking on my door. They bust in with a lot of noise. Stuff about catching up, mbona kupotea hivo? Ampapo? Halafu? Blah...blah....blah....Just the usual boring shit.
They were there to stay and worse the started rummaging through my stuff. The three of them. One was going through Kitty Hawk (my laptop and its sacred mind you) one through my magazines which I hold dear. They hold my memories. Sacred memories. My first by-line, my second and so on. My first published photo, my graphic designs. They all make my precious scrapbook. Nobody takes them away. Others contain stories by my favourite writers Tony Mochama, Biko Zulu, newspaper pull outs of the Staffroom diary, Clay muganda etc. The thing is that they are precious to me. You do not just pop in and start tearing them apart looking for hell knows what.

 One of the guys had earlier in the past week requested for my laptop. To do a word document! Which I guess is less than 1000 words, something you can pull up in a cyber cafe. Yet he wanted to stay with it overnight. I guessed he wanted to watch a movie, most probably blue, something you cannot watch on the family T.V. I told him Kitty Hawk was my best friend. He keeps me online because it has been a few months since an enterprising thief pick pocketed my Nokia at Bettyz. My current phone is a cheap internet-less LG and I trust Kitty Hawk and my modem to fill the gap. I blog from Kitty Hawk, write from it and when designing Photoshop and After Effects come in handy. They operate under Kitty Hawk’s jurisdiction.
I know the guys, they do not read, except text books. Allowing them to rummage through my stuff is sacrilege. A non-writer or a non reader never understands the fascination, the passion, the gem that is written word. Why I will drool over a column and pull the page out if I do not have the paper. Why I spent most of my time indoors, with my Kitty Hawk, a pen and a notebook. They never understand. That elicits an emotion from me which I cannot call hate. It’s too strong a word to use. But detest? Yes. I detest them but not to the point of hating them. See, they are my friends. We have been together for long, since primary school. The third guy was going through my stuff which included freebies I get from press bashes. He picked a particular Nokia cap which interested him. I told him to keep it.

I did not have the psyche to cook lunch for them. So I went and bought some mukimo, because it was the only cheap thing available and it was ‘that time of the month’. It was neither delicious nor whack, somewhere in between. The third guy had the fucking audacity to ‘touch touch’ the meal and declare it unfit for his stomach. We nearly fought, he was messing with my money because the fucking thing cost me 50 bob and we were 4 so that is two sock. That was the end of their visit. After the other guys wound upon their meals I ushered them out and told them never to pop in again un-invited.

Later while arranging my stuff again, I noticed some objects missing. A marker I received from EABL sometimes back. It’s just a marker, but it was my first freebie as a journalist. I kept it as a relic, to hold the memories. They had gone with it. The second one was a cheap pen I received from Samsung recently. A cheap blue one, but still mine. The third was a glossy USB cable which comes in handy every time I use a flash disk or modem. Kitty Hawks USB ports are on the back rather than the sides. It was gone too.

I do not know who between them developed itchy fingers. I heard one wish he was a journalist. I called them up but none could admit having taken them. Just as I expected. This leaves me with a question. Is there a time you should just let some friendships go rather than holding to them? I consider stealing my stuff a profanation, something which should be punished. Friends do not steal from you. They protect you. I am not sure next time they pass by I am going to let them in.

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