Physically, I am in a good place. My house is calm and I am surrounded by trees. Chicken are always clucking in the background. And if it is silent enough, you can hear the ducks in the neighboring compound. This place is hidden. You cannot know it is there unless somebody showed it to you. One of the reasons why I like it here. I also have good neighbors. Scratch that. A good neighbor. I don’t know the other tenants.
There is a mysterious crop of arrowroots that grows around this place. Nobody knows whether they are planted or they occur naturally. Once in a while, you wake up in the morning to find them pruned and tended to. Then there’s a man in the neighboring compound who lives with his cat. He takes evening walks with the furry creature. She has name, I have not heard it quiet clearly. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she was called Maria. In the evening when parents are calling their children to return home because it is dusk, you can hear him calling for his cat. She comes running, emerging from the mysterious plants. And the two take their evening walk.
There is also a mysterious cow, shepherded by a dog, which passes by every day between 10 and 11:45 am. Without fail. The duo, slow and mysterious, are always together. The dog lets the cow graze on the mysterious plants. The cow lets the dog roam around. If he gets too distracted, the cow moos for him. Then they go their way, disappearing mysteriously as they appeared.
Every day, a man walks his cat and a dog walks his cow.
There are four churches within a 200 meter radius of this place. I call it, the eye of God. Lol. There is Seventh – day Adventist in the background. Word of advice; do not stay close to these churches. These people sing every day. They practice daily without fail and on Saturday, they will sing for the whole day. Some evenings, their chaotic ensemble of shrieking and booming falsettos is welcome. Other days, I curse their devotion. Often, I can listen to their church service from my balcony. They preach in Kiswahili, telling the congregation to dress decently because their bodies are God’s dwelling and that women should submit because it is God’s law. Sigh.
There is Deliverance Church to the west. These ones, they are prayer warriors. Starting Thursday through to Sunday, there is always somebody locked in those large church halls wailing, singing, praying and chanting tongues. There is CFF to the Far East. I have never bothered to read the banner pasted in front of the church’s building to know what CFF stands for. It is a large building made of blue iron sheets and frosted glass. You can already tell that the choir sings off key and there is that sister who sings louder than everyone because somebody told her that the Holy Spirit bestowed upon her a gift of ministry through worship.
Lastly, there is Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG) with whom we share a fence. I listen to their service from my front veranda. Theirs is a chaotic scene. They always have two praise sessions; one which you and I understand and another which only they understand—every song is transposed to a certain key such that it sounds like you are listen to African Divine Church melodies. The pastor is loud and shouts into the microphone. It does not help that he sounds like a concrete mixer. He also preaches throwing hand gestures in the air that look like gang signs. Worse is his tendency to latch onto one key phrase that he will repeat over and over again during the sermon. And the congregation is always clapping; half-hearted claps that sound like dying fish on a pavement.
In the same compound as the church are rental single rooms wherein a shifty business is booming. You can tell from the sketchy-looking crowd that visits the compound; crusty anxious-looking youth in groups of twos or threes who are always looking east and west like meerkats hoping not to be seen or caught. The boys in blue once had a field day with these ones in a raid that lasted hours because the business owner had jumped over the fence and was hiding in the mysterious arrowroot bushes such that he could not be found. Unlike other shifty business owners who would pack their bags and leave the very next day, this one stayed. He continues to use church Wi-Fi to reach out to his customers. Even better, the door of his house faces the church podium, right there where there is a sign of a cross. Evidently, God is his witness.
This is the nature of the place where I live. At night, I get to sit on the rooftop of the building and share tic-tacs with God. Meditation. In the morning, I wake up to a family of rowdy birds living in the trees and the chicken on a rampage. I sit on my balcony and watch the sunrise illuminating the rusty iron sheets of the settlements in Githurai. Sunrises in the city are not the magical aesthetic you would want them to be. They are different. With a roguish quality. In the day, I play heavily contested Chess and Scrabble matches with my neighbor from our balconies which overlooking the mysterious plants. And we watch the man walk with his cat and the cow walking with her dog. And the choir from SDA give us background music. In the evenings, I sit here and write. I write to tell you that I am at a good place physically. My house is calm and I am surrounded by trees. Chicken are always clucking in the background. And if it is silent enough, you can hear the ducks in the neighboring compound. I like it here.