Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Be My Neighbour

I am not one who places adverts in the newspapers and in fact once in a while I have admonished people who have done so. But this week, I am close to doing so after my life turned into a mini-nightmare with the advent of a new neighbour.


First the good book tells us to love our neighbours. It would help if we knew what love really means! I don’t know about love; that is why I blog so much about it. It is also why so many musicians sing about it. In fact, Foreigner even went ahead and sang that craving we all have: I Want To Know What Love Is.


‘Love Is All Around’ replied Wet Wet Wet but they were wrong, wrong, wrong on account of my neighbours.


Even people in love don’t know what love is.


Many a time, when we have fallen ‘in love’ with someone we have tended to imagine that this is the best love we could ever feel. Thus statements like: No one, no one will ever make me feel like this. Then the “love” ends, and then someone else makes you feel like that again! Older geezers will tell you that therein lies the mystery of the definition of love.


So, hitherto I have said that no one would ever read KTN Prime News better than Kasavuli. Or that no woman would ever sing better than Whitney. Or no one would ever play football better than my Dad. Yet, years later there is now Lilian Muli, there is Britney and there is a Gerrard. What is even more, their names rhyme with Kasavuli, Whitney and Dad!


Before my tribulations began, I had this neighbour who had dashing looks and a body to kill for. Each morning, she would don some skimpy exercise suit and I would sip my breakfast as I watched her through the window going through her exercise routine. Whoever sang about ‘sometimes dancing can make you fall in love’, had clearly not seen my neighbour exercise.


She would then jog around the estate. She would look so perfect. And when you see someone from afar, that person is always so great. They seem so perfect since you don’t know them and thus you do not know their faults.


Once in a while, whilst I would be taking a shower, I would open the window and to my consternation, I would find the neighbor also taking a shower with her window open. Only when my water run dry, or when she wrapped her beautiful body in a towel would my shower end, whichever came first.


From that window view, all I saw was a fine, sweet, shapely, sensual, sexy body that seemed to inwardly shout: Make love to thy neighbour.


This seemingly blissful co-existence came to an abrupt halt when some chain smoking guy started appearing at her doorstep each Friday carrying a bag. I always assumed it was a lap top he had in there.


His presence in our court was just as reassuring as a grave digger paying a visit to the Old People’s Home.


Soon, I couldn’t sleep a wink due to some passionate noises emanating from my cute neighbour’s house. The sound she produced when they were fooling around could only be called a neigh. So finally I figured out the real meaning of the word ‘neighbour’!


I also figured out that the bag the dude carried was a Fornication Bag as he would not leave until Monday mornings. But oh what those moanings during the entire weekend did to my ears. Credit to this mystery man for turning my neighbor from a hot woman to a woman on heat!


Sometimes I wondered whether they did the ‘nice times’ next to an amplifier!


I bumped into mystery man one Monday morning as he left her house. He nodded his head at me as if to subtlety let me know he is really hitting that! I figured he would soon be texting her some short message to the effect: It was a joy just being the object of your loud screams.


It turns out the screams, nay, neighs, had been heard from as far as Lodwar as during the next neighbourhood meeting, the woman who lives in the next-next house said this noises had to be stopped. Without batting an eyelid, the hot-on-heat neighbor replied: Prease! Give me a bleak! You don’t hear me comprain about your brack cat –which is the rargest cat I have seen – miauwing the whole night. You radies just don’t rike me!


Fault number two. Her accent. I think she just killed it for me. There was an uproar and a few days later, she terminated her tenancy and moved houses.


I was hoping that I got an eye candy of a neighbour as a replacement. One who wouldn’t hang her teddy bear near my clothesline as the recent one used to do.





So when I opened the Nairobi Star and read about a man who had killed his wife, I mentioned it to the Chairman of our Estate that neighbours killing wives are not the neighbours you want to have around you.


The Chairman was amused. “What do you mean, man? The guy killed his wife; not his neighbour!”


I have never figured out how this heartless man whom I am told is a Doctor became our Chairman. During one meeting, some neighbour suggested that we place signs at our gates saying: ‘Slow Down! Children at Play!’ He simply retorted, ‘Why do you not let the brats play in the compound’


I wanted to blurt out a ‘Very well put Dr. Bullshit’ but, to my credit, I suppressed it.


He is also some form of tribal chauvinist. He went ahead and placed on our main gate, some sign whose meaning I am still yet to decipher!





The Movers turned into the Estate and with them brought the new tenant. I held my breath. I had to witness this because ‘so I am told’ is a dangerous source of news.


Out stepped a Plus Size Woman with a frown. Her elbow could take all of two rolls of tape measure. She slowly turned her gigantic head and gave each house a glance. I immediately rushed upstairs and shut the bathroom window, permanently, I believe!


I switched on my TV and gladly absorbed the vuvuzela noises from the Confederations Cup.


What a huge woman that was! I wouldn’t complain if she was a neigh-bour too. I wouldn’t cross the paths of any of her daughters, if she was capable of producing any.


My TV watching was interrupted when the door bell rang.


I stepped out of my comfort zone and opened the door only to be confronted by Plus Size Woman with a panga in her hands!


‘Hi,’ I cowered as she analyzed me from head to toe. ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked whilst silently praying that my breakfast would not take leave of my tummy.


‘Is it OK if I cut off some branches on that loquat tree?’, she asked as she pointed the panga at the tree.


She was swinging the panga rather dangerously. She had just moved in and the first thing she is thinking about is chopping off some branches from the only fruity tree I have encountered in recent years?


‘No’, I replied.


‘It is not OK?!’ she thundered with what must have been a trademark frown.


‘No’, I protested, ‘I meant I do not mind! It is OK!’


If you ask me, especially if you ask me without waving a panga in your hands, it is not OK! But at that moment, I was remembering that the previous week, my Medical Insurance had expired and the only medical cover I had at the time was Jesus.


‘Good!’ she said and moved her body mass out of range. 'That was a close shave Our Kid', I said to myself.


I miss my old neighbour! Even if she would have said this was the rargest woman she had ever seen! Even if she squeaked like a chew-toy! Even if her mystery man’s car-alarm used to go off at 3am in the middle of my sleep.


Seriously though, there’s a telly soap that has been running for years known as Neighbours. In it we are told, ‘Everybody needs good neighbours…’ I think the key word there is good. Not hot. Not on heat. And certainly not Panga Wielding but cake baking ones.


Next time, just let people apply for the position of neighbour.




25 comments:

KR said...

I 'officially' apply.

Great read!

Hana Njau-Okolo said...

LOL...Ha! why did Evelyn Champagne King's "Girl you make my love, CALM down come to mind?" The Plus Size Woman did it for you, huh? Pole sana jamaa. LOL!
Lakini, think of the possibilities. Now you will be treated to double-whopper neighs that will surge up to a defeaning climax! Don't let that kill your imagination. LOLOL!

As always, nime-enjoy kusoma.

Loco said...

Awwwww, I just got here and I havent even read but that coodgie woodgie little bunny hanging on the clothes line caught my eye, it's soooooo cute!!!! Wubbu gugugugu!!

Ehhhh, okay, off to read now :-D

Mo said...

Everybody does needs good neighbours.

Robert Frost said, in one of his poems (Mending Wall), that "Good fences make good neighbours".

Thus anyone CAN be a good neighbour; it's just a matter of beefing up those fences another 10 feet... and hiring the panga-wielding panda-sized neighbour as security.

joyunspeakable2011 said...

1. you are back...
2. you need seculity...now you have it
3. you need a rrrarge [neigh]ba for better understanding of tlibal messages....the messages might be calling tlibesmen up for war...so you definatery need her near you
4. this was shenzi type in a vely hiralious way.

Mama said...

Thank goodness for this rib cracking post...we had missed you sana!

I never thought you to be a voyeur at all! What with all the models parading themselves in near nothing and towels in your house? Hehehehehehe! Enyewe the grass is always greener on the other side.

LOL at the Teddybear next to your clothes line! I can just imagine your male friends visiting and laughing at you after "just having washed your teddy". You were just being mean, that's why you photographed it.

Have you found out what the sign on your gate means?

Our Kid said...

@ KR ... You officially apply? I think you need to give a little more details. This neighbourhood needs some sanity!

@ Mama Shujaa ... You are messing with my imagination. If the PSW makes any neigh sounds, I am leaving. I can't have such nights anymore.

@ Loco ... You are crazy. That bunny should have PETA on its sides. How can they hang it by its ears.

@ Mo ... I like that! I however doubt that the panga wielding woman is really part of security. More like insecurity!!

@ Joyunspeakable ... You are right about Shenzi Type! That is the story of my estate!

Is there some place people go to learn that accent. I hope when, or if, my ex-neighbour reads this post, she will not 'levenge!'

@ Mama ... Now I am a voyeur? The window was open! I just happened to be looking outside!! He he. Plus, if you must know, the 'grass' wasn't really greener... it was darker! I think she doesn't shave.

You know, before this neighbour, I never knew what people did to dirty teddy bears. Aren't they meant to be dry cleaned?

I still haven't found out what that sign on the gate means. I thought it meant, Children At Play, but that would be giving my Chairman too much credit!

savvy said...

Let me first digress to the previous post: After having found out what the cuchini is (pronounced in my head as kuchini), she did not want want it? Those bikinis are obsecene enuough with the cuchinis.

Okay, back to this one:
Neighbours, neighbours...first, you get one with roud noises and who roves teddy bears and hangs them by their ears (BTW, I own no teddies).

Then you get plus sized. If you ask me, the only noises plus-sized and her panga will be making at night will be prayer cries, she sounds the type to hold those midnight prayers.

savvy said...

And there was this girl in my campus who had huuuge teddy bears, one pink, one white..one day she washed them and hang them on the lines-by their ears no less!(I had to take the photos, unfortunately, they were in the Chinese that was stolen).

And now to my question, I can understand small teddy bears meant for display, but I just can't bring myself to wrap my hands around a piece of staffed fabric for comfort? At night or daytime.

savvy said...

Seems am not done yet!

Apparently, the sign at the gate says:" Usinyamaze Gate."

Just gotten the literal translation from someone who claimst to understand the language. In other words: "Don't keep quiet, Gate."

Our Kid said...

@ Savvy ... Woooah! Prayer cries? I surely cannot handle that! I am a-moving it! Midnight prayers.. those things called 'kesha'! No no no. Absolutely not!

I think the neighbour lass didn't need no teddy bear at all after Mr. Fornication Bag Carrier showed up.

That translation of yours really doesn't make sense. Do Not Keep Quiet At The Gate? Our Chairman is crazy but even he wouldn't put up such a sign. Maybe there is a message getting lost in translation there. Maybe it is Do Not Hoot At The Gate.

clandey said...

think the gate sign meeans "usipite gate"(literaly) wonder wat u hiding in there!!!nwy gotta get gud neighbours dude n 4 the neigh is it lyk th 1 4 a horse???(maneiba private matters shld remain private!!!)

savvy said...

Maybe only crazy ones get his (the chairman's) message

gladys said...

Lol!thats usipite gate lol!
i can foresee the weight watchers anonymous being on ur case soon for hating on the plus size :p
Nice post n lol @ the teddy

Our Kid said...

@ Clandey ... Now that makes sense. But why would he say 'Usipite Gate' if we live past that gate? Isn't that message trying to block even us from accessing our houses? Eish!

@ Savvy ... I think you are right. Dr. Bullshit is what I call that Chairman.

@ Gladys ... Thanks for the compliment. But am not hating on plus sized women. Only those that have permanent frowns and look like they could murder me!

Peter Njenga said...

The language is Kikuyu alright, I can confirm it means "Usipite Lango".
Only that they never wrote it in proper Kyuk: "Ndugakìre Kìhingo".

Guess it means that you do not get inside that gate until a guard allows you in... or something like that.

Nice post dude!

Wanjiku Mwaurah said...

lol...est...
Joyunspeakable you ale so sicklol..... ..enyewe i had missed you, our kid.
he...he...he.. nice way to start my weekend ..on a veli high note!!!

Shiko-Msa said...

You just had to take a picture of that teddy bear didn't you? Seems the poor teddy will then be subjected to some hot iron.

May ask what other items you've been photographing on people's hang lines? That you have not disclosed or will be disclosing in a future article? Or not at all? Toboa!

Our Kid said...

@ Peter Njenga... You mean the apostrophe changes the meanings of words? Wow. That ìs a complicated language then, ìsnt ìt?

@ Graceful Glider... or should I say Glaceful Grider? Enjoy your week!

@ Shiko-Msa... I have photographed a few interesting things on my neighbours clotheslines. You know that thing they say about hanging your dirty linen in public... well some people actually do it! If you need me to post a few photos, well... forget it, he he.

Screamer said...

Hee, now this was a good one! But they all are, very humorous!
I'm just thinking, is it for real? These women, are they real? And that photo of a sign on some gate, that's your gate?
Our kid, your life is just one big comedy show!

willpress said...

Buhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Dang, I've really chekad. . My condolences to your newly acquired neighbour. Bt tuko pamoja on that teddy bear issue. . . Woman with Teddy = Proceed With Caution!

Anonymous said...

Pssssst, our kid, are you out there, wave your hand if you hear me?! Are you waving?! Okay I can't see the hand, try jumping up and down..... Oh no?! Not if you're in court!!!

Anne said...

Fornication Bag!!! I still can't get past that!! Wewe ni msick

Unknown said...

a great find for panda fanatic!
my roommate and i LOVE this bag
hkpanda.freetzi.com

MtotoMzuri said...

I have so laughed! I so feel you Our Kid - I have one such neighbour. He is a he and every Saturday evening or shall I call it the wee hours of Sunday morning, he comes around with samosa-bajia ... there is a lot of club banging noise emanating from his cubicle (please note, the echos in my block is crazy, and we have about 3 houses with kids. And he does absolutely zilch to muzzle the neighs! Damn! We need liberation from such neigh-clubbers!