BBQ

BBQ

A promise is a debt. Finally, our boss decided to throw a bash that was way below the Nairobian standard.

A Saturday morning when I was at a limbo. Should I go to school or need I just make it to the venue of the bbq which had been postponed because it was not going to make any economic sense the past week over.

Albeit no one knows what is awaiting, there is always that instinct that things may not go well. It usually lingers either on the left or the right hemisphere, only as a man, you cannot decipher where it truly is to be judicious.

The potent feeling is usually overridden when you get carried away in ubiquitous banter that ensures there is ecstasy that negates the former so that you are in deep delusion not knowing when the emotions will rejuvenate.

Arriving at the venue, you find your immediate boss who never considers himself as one because you sometimes chat like teenagers on rampage. Though married, and looks like the bugger is too faithful to taste the waters on the other side of the river, he condones the vulgar and when he sees a really hot damsel, he will not fail to mention it.

When boys meet, they get petty. Especially when there is no female folk who can act as a barrier in their pep talk. Intimate details get discussed. What is worse is when the buggers discussing them are married chaps and you are the only single guy who happens to have no serious girlfriend and the probity of even a come we stay looks like it will be superfluous in dealing with this wicked problem.

Since you are eagerly waiting for the bbq, you ponder how the availability of beer and roasted meat will be. The bugger does not drink. He has no real picture of what makes men like to binge. Men are born to be hunters, when hunting comes to a climax, there is the part where they sit around the fire to warm and strategize for the next catch.

There is always the prospect of talking about that lady who caught your eye. The one with a fine ass, voluptuous hips and pretty face full of make-up, who excites the Goliath of a man into submission. The one who makes men say, “ntakula kwa macho.” But that was rubbished when one chap said there was a guy who he had saying that only cowards of men “kula kwa macho” if they cannot surmount the courage to approach. A real man takes the bull by its horns. If your vibing skills are top notch, you will approach the lady and if possible, bed her. If she brushes you aside, you will have tried. Even 50 cent rapped about getting rich or dying trying. So as a man, you either quench your carnal desires, or die trying. However, with venereal maladies being real, you only need to sheath up or alternatively raise your two fingers up. Who wants to kick the bucket, rotting like a carcass due to ephemeral death all because your libido drove you to eating the forbidden fruit? Anyway, there are peeps who don’t care. They say death is a once in a lifetime affair. But when you trigger it, never let the burden be upon those who affectionately mean a lot to you. Those people who will be by your side when you are wrenching with pain or retching gore on your deathbed. Yours truly is a witness of the same. When as an adult, you have to be put on pampers because you cannot hold it. Your body is too frail and fragile because you enjoyed and never thought of the repercussions having been driven by your loins to sample out the impermissible.

It surely was going to be a day worth it. No ladies were in the house. As a matter of fact, with their big headedness and pegging feelings where it should not be, it was an all men affair. Goat’s meat, chicken and smokies. There was a confession by one chap that it was even better that they were not around. Ladies kind of fear fire and would have been on men’s heels expecting favours of being served just because they are ladies. Which is never right considering women are fighting for equal treatment with men. That is probably why most open air fire chefs are men. Like in Carni, you will not find a single lady because the place for grilling is smoking hot. Had to mention that because it is the only place I have gone to in Nairobi with crocodile meat.

After lighting the barbecue grill, we decided to roast the ready to eat smokies first because they were going to ease the hunger pangs that were evident owing to the way guys did ravenously gobble them even though chicken smokies are like those bananas which are called “othigo jawouro” in jeng. They make you lose appetite faster than you anticipated because you are not yet used to the stuff. I think they are yet to penetrate the market like bacon smokies, ouch.

In fact guys who grew up in the shags are better off lighting a bbq grill than we who pride in being called ‘born tao’. We are rookies in this art. Those guys don’t fear the billowing smoke that makes one feel like cry baby. Back then, if smoke was constantly surging towards you. It only meant one thing. You had done something wrong and the wind had no influence in any way especially in the shags. I give it up for these guys for swiftly figuring out how to light the charcoal grill ingeniously using small wooden sticks because the guy who considered himself an expect using newspaper and paraffin to light the grill had failed miserably in his quest and had to pretend he had gone to check on something while all along he had been chest thumping how he has been doing the same using newspaper because he holds a bash on a weekly basis (I felt jealous and envious).

The smokies were a disaster. The glutton in me sent me to partaking one which was half cooked (though they were ready to eat). To keep up appearances, I devoured it like a hyena because I was also feeling risible hungry. The next person who did the same had to throw the chow away because he could not stand the blech. The flakey nature compounded by the fact that it was not well-roasted made the smokies unpalatable at first. But with their continuity in being roasted they were zingy. The guy who despised them ended up chomping eight. Most of the smokies got blackened because of the excessive heat. But either way, mwenye njaa hachagui chakula.

“Mimi hapana tumia hio na siwezi enda subermarkt kununua, si wewe unajua hiyo.” Ali, the guy who has pathetic English that the queen would be sorry to listen to him said when I ask him about drinks (ale).

Apparently, he had bought some soft drinks manufactured by one of his kith going by the name ‘Tamu.’ There was tamu malt which was an exaggerated spoof of the original malt drink or the poor performing alvaro on the retail shelves. Earlier during the week, Ali had been the punching bag of employees who had been on a go slow for two days for his reckless and arrogant attitude. All the blame had been heaped on him because he had acted imperious in character and this had gone into the nerves of many.

Trust someone to renege upon seeing plenty. Especially when it is going to satisfy him alone, he will act selfish and anyone who does that never realizes until guys decide that enough is enough.

However, Ali is that guy who can be selfless sometimes. He sometimes goes out of his way to give guys victual favours even though most guys are weary of his continuous raucous avarice that he handles everything. Like hijacking the role of procurement when they have been delegated to another because he has the ear of the boss and has a crafty way of convincing the lady boss to role things in his favour. Kuosha wasee nayo.

Away from this Ali guy, roasting meat is indeed a skill. You need to have honed your skill continuously or the craft should come as a talent because there are guys who really know how to tenderly roast meat.

Chicken wings when well roasted are quite tangy. They live that crispy taste in the mouth where you feel like want more. Something good is served in small doses. Since goat meat was in plenty, most forgot about it and concentrated on chicken. But there were guys who just wanted goat meat. Later on when the lean parts of the chicken had been all feasted and the bony less fleshy parts remained is when they realized they should have feasted on chicken. In either way, say the goat meat would have been in scarcity and the chicken in abundance, most would have lamented at how the chow had been discriminately favoured on wrong side.

Drinking plenty of soda with roasted meat is a no no, the effervescence will later be unsavory. The best thing about drinking alcohol and eating plenty of meat is that it is prodigious. The intensity by which alcohol burns meat makes it have the natural, accepted universal link which if compounded with sports make what results to human pleasure among real men. The affinity beer has in the digestion process of roasted meat is in fact what is human pleasure to a man. Ideally, most men would rather give up sex altogether than choose to be vegan if a Russian roulette was the wager in this case.

Roasting and eating meat at you pleasure is fun. You get to know the tit that roasting is no lesser a job. It requires patience, focus and an extra sense that the meat will be alright. But when you are doing the roasting for yourself, you can afford to eat even half-cooked meat because of kuwashwa. But with time when you are satiated, you get the feeling that you need something tender, well grilled.

Since there was no ale, we drunk up all the cheap soda. Even my immediate boss who earlier on intimated he would not indulge found himself smelling of roasted meat. That is if we were smelling of the same which someone alluded to. He really enjoyed it and you could tell that in the event one was held again, he would never miss. The only folly being he does not partake of ale. But societal changes may soon force him to change ship. Who knows? It starts like a zygote by the time it turns into a fetus, you really need professional help. It is called addiction.

After eating to our feel, we had been satiated till that point where you never wanted to see meat again. So more than ten guys could not be able to demolish a whole goat which was less than 10 kilos? It takes real men to do that. We decided to head back home after the meal. It was a day well spent. But more was awaiting.

Since it was a weekend and work was not going to be a holding factor, we decided to go partake ale at one of the guys who lived nearby. It was going to be an after party. That which you indulge in because it is just right to do so.

Legend it was. A cheap brandy you hate the taste but love the liquid that is within our means because you are still hustling to get to that point when Johnny Walker blue label will not be equated to your monthly gross pay but the much you spend on a bad day when you are hell ass broke and you and your boys still need that ka something to burn through in order to cheer you up.

Watching sports while drinking ale is not only macho but lets the virility in you go sky high. You think you have made it while in reality you are nowhere near the dreams you have. The good thing about alcohol is that it gives you a better perspective of how to analyze matches. You become the random guy who is like, “Sanchez should have taken advantage of the small space and passed the ball to Vidal who would have put the last nail on the already dilapidated form of former world soccer giants Brazil.”

Of course you are saying that in Swahili. The man of the house is not drinking on this day. Later when I asked the wife, she told me the guy never does it when she is in the house. She breathes fire and the man of the house would have ended up sleeping outside the matrimonial home in the event he dared try. She told me so. She is a good friend. The one with a curvy derriere you have wishes but since she is taken and a wife of a colleague, you kill the thoughts that you will ever go anywhere. Of course you have talked to her, and she said she was just in the union because of the baby and the fact that she is still not stable financially. Maina Kageni morning discussion had triggered the topic you remember.

Which reminds me of an old chap while I was sending some success cards who started telling us of women who even pay you to engage in the devil's dance with them until they get paged and kick you like an ass does when irked after fulfilling your due diligence.

I got inebriated to that point I felt like I wanted to just slump on the floor in this neatly furnished single roomed house. But when time was up, I had to pick up myself. I was not going to sleep on the floor. I remember going to the Indian toilets and messing it up because I could not aim at the whole in that state. After relieving myself, off we went. 

In the mat, I could not hold it and, I slept all the way. But not with intermittent pukes that left me inn a sordid state. I have to confess that tamu was the cause because the result was just watery not anything solid. I did retch like two times and when I finished, subtly, I felt good.

Taking a mat on my way to the house, I also slept the moment I was seated inside. I remember a hot chic seating next to me, but I could not start anything meaningful with her. She had a HTC phone. Why is it that most chicks in their twennies have this atypical love for 5" phones? Dudes of the same age are still stuck in three inch though like yours truly who currently stuck with an idiot Huawei phone that cannot hold charge for more than 6 hours and keeps on hanging so that you have to keep pressing the power button to reboot it so that it can work well. I will soon upgrade to a P8 lite, if I get the bucks.

On waking up, the lady was alighting. She disappeared just like that. But I came to my senses. I was to alight in the next stage. That is when a stand off ensured.

I alighted alright, but gave out Sh.50 as fare. This got the conductor exasperated as he was demanding twice the figure. I could not yield to his demands because during weekends, that's the fare. Then another joined him telling me to give out money. 

‘Boss hio ndio niko nayo’

‘Buda gari ni mia, nipe pesa wewe’

We continued haggling before I found myself seated on the ground him having swept me off in the blink of an eye. I felt the earth rocking beneath me and my mind drifting in and out like the tide. My throat felt dry like the baked earth awaiting Elnino relief. Those are the times you feel like you were 6’5 foot something or more and heavily built so that the chap would be looking at you like a giant. I wished I was not that drunk to take the bugger hands on. I bet he had noticed and that was the reason why I found myself falling like a heap of potataoes. I walked away ravenous and it is later when I started feeling the pain.

HASTA LAVISTA BABY

[Picture Source: My own]