Old haunts

There used to be a tiny cafe in Westlands that sold huge cookies that tasted like bubble gum. Back in the day, I set out to find the best tasking cookie in Nairobi and that’s how I found this almost hidden cafe.

 I don’t remember what the place was called, but there was a charming barista that used to make the best latte art, he once made an elephant. I don’t know if that’s a hard thing to make, but he did and it looked very cool. And as he did his job, he asked you random questions about your day. Like what was the most unexpected thing that happened to you in your day? Or if you could do anything today, what would you do?

He’d tell you about his favorite customers if you asked him. He had many regulars apparently, and he once told me about this old Indian woman who used to put 8 sachets of sugar in her tea when she came alone, but no sugar when she’d come with her husband. She left big tips when she came, which made her his favorite customer.

Anyway, it was at this cafe that I first met Kaycee. She had ashy skin when I met her, it was so ashy it was grey-ish, and she had shades on (that cold dull morning). She bought black coffee with as little words as possible, I don’t even think she spoke, she just looked at the small menu and pointed at the words “Black coffee” and showed the Barista. Then she turned to me and gave me a nod. I don’t remember what we were meeting about but she seemed so distant, I was sure there was no way we would get along.

Fast forward to a year later, the cafe closed down (a shame) and she tracked me down for an interview. Which was surprising, because we hardly spoke. The first thing I saw when she walked into the place she had chosen to meet was her bald head, then her nose loop, then a big (more, long than big) tattoo snaking up from her hand into the maroon colored t-shirt sleeves at her elbow. All of which weren’t there when we first met. 

She sat down, ordered a black coffee and a black forest cake. Then she told me I would be the very first person to hear what she had to say. Which made me curious. Did she kill someone and dump their body in that forest in Zambezi? Was she about to lay on me that she was a drug lord, Mafia boss, Don Corleone ? Did she witness something she shouldn’t have and is now looking for somewhere to hide? Was she a warrior in Wakanda? She looked apprehensive, which made me apprehensive.

“You look troubled,” she tells me, scrunching her eyebrows together.

“Not at all. Tell me, what is this mysterious thing you couldn’t even give me a hint of over the phone?”

Se looks at me as if she’s gauging me. To see if I’m worth telling secrets to. She clears her throat as the waitress comes with our food order and I try to ask a few questions to lighten the situation, and also keep my wild imagination in check.

 I ask her if she has kids and she says she has a son, 7 years old and the most energetic ball of clumsiness she’s ever met. She tells me the first time her son learned to walk, he ran. All the way to the door that leads to the veranda, then he hit his head on it and tripped at the same time.

She tells me how when her son was 5, she and her husband found him hanging high on a tree by his leg, crying that he couldn’t get down. Apparently her life is all about saving her son from certain death.

“But that’s the work of all mothers.” she tells me.

I ask her about her changes. The tattoo, piercing, shaving her hair.

“What’s all that about?” I ask.

She tells me she went to a small island, the name escapes me, it’s one of those islands in West Asia that people would go to to search for inner peace, or to run away from the materialistic nature of our capitalist world. She went, after she found out her husband cheated on her.

She tells me what bothered her was how he kept it a secret so well that she didn’t even find out about it like other women would have; a woman’s perfume on his clothes, or scandalous texts and emails or a woman who’s not related to him calling him in the middle of the night. No, he told her about it himself. And apologized profusely. This was the exchange that sent her to the island.

“So at the island I found out three big things about myself. And this is the first time I’m saying them out loud. The first is that I was missing the big picture. I was a tech consultant earning lots of money doing a boring job I didn’t like. I’ve always wanted to be a chef, or like those people who call themselves culinary artists.

 The second thing I found out that I am inherently and incredibly fearful. I’m always one of those people my friends will say that I’m the life of the party or I’m very brave or confident or courageous and I really am not. I found out that I hate new experiences because I’m afraid. And I hated myself for that fear.”

I look at her as she speaks, at the completely un-orthodox way of her look and demeanor and I wonder what that place did to her.

She tells me of her third thing, the thing that made her find out that she hated her current job and that she’s fearful. This was a thing she didn’t know how to reconcile. She liked girls. She tells me how she met someone she at first thought was full of herself, then in a matter of 13 days, she had had such an intense altering relationship, that based on the things they discussed and things she experienced, it led to a lifestyle change for her. Only problem was, (and I quote) she was a dedicated, Bible following Christian.

She got back to Kenya, quit her job, moved out of her and her husband’s apartment, rented a house, and started an eaterie from her small kitchen.

She shaved her hair to mark the new beginning and found out she looked good with no hair. So she kept it that way. Months later she found another girl she liked. She had thought the first girl was a fluke, brought about by the intensity of the feelings in the season she was in. And she really liked this girl. But the bible, but this girl. She debated over it for weeks wondering what to do.

“Not to mention, being with this girl was so different from any of my boyfriends. She was cool, cultured, she knew things I had no idea about, which is hard because I am well read.”

I salute her at this.

 “My mind wasn’t sure what to think, my heart was properly torn in two, and it just didn’t seem fair to me that our souls’ connection that felt so good was wrong in any way. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I thought my feelings would go away with time but, no. Not in the least. And its like one of the biggest debates going on in the church right now yeah? That if God is love, then he should accept all forms of love yeah? Love is love right?”

I tell her that someone asked me the very same question a week ago. She tells me she’s still researching on her plight. I recommend some books. Then I ask her if she sees her son.

Sometimes I pick him from school, but most weekends we spend together. I ask her if she thinks her son was affected by his parents splitting up. She tells me he finds it cool to have two homes. But he thinks its temporary, based on how he’s been talking. She’s not about to tell him he has a situationship with another girl. She laughs even just thinking about it. She says she would never tell him about it, which makes her think that it shouldn’t be the case.

“If you’re not proud of it, isn’t that proof that you shouldn’t be doing it?” she asks then answers herself “maybe. It must be.”

I ask her how she wants to end this, because she keeps looking at the clock face above my head and I need to get going. And she says,

“Kid, don’t do drugs.” 

then laughs at her parting shot as she picks her poncho (which middle aged person has a poncho?) to leave.

 See you next Friday

Happy Moi day.



Photo by Karungari Ndubz