LIFE BY LOUIS: Adventures of a dowry ceremony trip

Saturdays in Nairobi are busy days and if you have plans to stay indoors and have a well-deserved rest after a hard week, then you could be wrong.

Just when you are trying to get your life in order and have a quiet weekend, you get yourself in to a situation where you have to go for some dowry payment ceremony for a friend.

Although the friend convinces you that the ceremony is taking place in his significant others home just after Thika, you later get convinced that the location is nearer Libya going by the distance that you shall travel.

I say that because you leave Nairobi at dawn and darkness still finds you still on the way with no signs of arrival. The journey is not helped by the fact that you shall make countless stop-overs at all petrol stations along the way waiting for some people who claim to have just left Voi.

The truth of the matter is that they are at a popular roast meat eatery along the Southern Bypass peeling off juicy goat ribs and escorting them with their favourite cold beverages.

HELD HOSTAGE

You finally arrive and your hosts hold you hostage at the gate, demanding a hefty fine to atone for your lateness.

You must oblige, although it is very clear to everyone that the only way you could have arrived on time is if you had left Nairobi on Wednesday morning.

After paying the lateness fine, you are asked to produce a bottle opener, a cloth for wiping the soda bottles and sisal ropes for carrying the soda crates.

You have to send someone on a motorbike to the nearest shopping centre to purchase these items. Another scarce one hour is squandered in this pre entry dramatization.

STARVING

Food is plenty, and this is a good thing because all of you are starving after having driven all day. There is tea, sour porridge, a traditional brew, head and hooves soup and sodas.

The hosts keep beseeching you to take more food like you have spare room for food in the lungs and pancreas. There are lots of speeches, songs and dance. A local budding musician is lined up to introduce his latest hits, and he ends up performing the whole album while forcing you to buy the poorly done DVD.

NEGOTIATIONS COMPLETE

At some point, the chief negotiators from both sides that comprise of old men and women retreat into a secret room for two hours. Your team later emerge looking beaten. You are all hopeful that the negotiations are complete but you are wrong. There is an impasse, and your entire delegation is summoned to contribute an extra two thousand shillings per person to hit a certain abrupt demand by the host negotiators.  

It is going to 9pm and after the panel of negotiators has haggled for the girl to a reasonable price, you are given some more freezing sodas to take and it is time to leave for Nairobi.

Then I spot them. They have been sitting comfortably in a corner ordering cups and platefuls of anything that passed in their vicinity. Just as I am convincing the engine of my KVX to start and counseling it that this is going to be a harsh journey and it should stay strong, these three people knock on the car window.

PLEASE DROP US…

"We have been told that you are going to Nairobi. Can you please drop us there at Moi Avenue?”

My heart and the car engine stop simultaneously. I bite my lower lip in deep thought. 

How did these people get here in the first place?

Were they born here in what I believe is Libya and are going to Nairobi for the first time?

Are they escaping some civil conflicts?

What if I leave them here and civil war breaks out and I later hear that they didn't make it out?

Have they won some green card and are in transit to Trumps great country through Nairobi?

Or they came specifically for this ceremony but they are not sure how they did and not sure how to get back to Nairobi?

From my geography classes I know that from Libya you can see Europe across the ocean. I am tempted to ask them to cross the ocean into Europe instead because it is nearer and less treacherous compared to an impeding overnight ride in my KVX.

NO SLEEPOVER

Im clearly the last driver from the ceremony and I know that from our customs, there is no sleepover in a dowry ceremony.

I am also cognizant of the fact that KVX came carrying five passengers and it complained all the way due to the heavy load that strained the small engine.

This miserable situation is already giving me a splitting headache.

I tell them to give me some more time as I analyse the dire-looking situation. A quick peep at the dashboard and I can see the fuel gauge telling a woeful story of malnutrition.

I walk round the car and kick the wheels and press the shock absorbers, trying to test their resilience. They are miserable. 

Then it hits me. These people have been sent by the Almighty who is the giver of my KVX and all other good things to test my level of generosity. He wants to see how humble I can get if He blesses me with a Toyota Land Cruiser V8 that my member of parliament drives when coming to the village to inspect development projects including the bodaboda roofed shed.

Or maybe He wants to bless me with a private jet like our good televangelists.

"Get into the back seat and fasten your seat belts," I finally announce to my eager passengers.

They offer their profuse gratitude and doze off immediately the engine starts with a cough. During the entire journey the car windows will steam from inside due to the exothermic activities of digestion from the car occupants. I am also going to encounter the smell of noxious byproducts of digestion that will force me to lower the car windows before I suffocate.

When I pass via the next petrol station and tell the attendant to add fuel worth Sh300, the car occupants even snore louder.

I finally drop them off at Moi Avenue at dawn and await the next friends dowry ceremony that I hope shall not be in Guinea Bissau.

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