Except you, no one else cared

Except you, no one else cared

By MUSYOKA NGUI

Before I had you, I had a fascination for seeing trees and ground move under my feet. So much was the desire that I wondered how I’d balance gas and gear.

But then like all fairy tales there was a dark side to it. I was just a message and you were the channel. The three of us weren’t exactly a trinity but as we jumped the bumpy patch, I lost count of how long time stood and where my hide will be when the pendulum rests.

It was on Christmas and doctors were on strike. I lay on a stretcher with strings and stiches on my left leg. My nurse called it overindulgence in the party the previous night. Which party? The all Seeing Eye had missed a great detail.

Then another night while chasing a contract my conduct was blurred. The sharp bend was so near that I my judgment was rushed. And when it was all over my annual leave became a sick one. Worse, except you, no one else cared. And they keep insisting tuko pamoja yet they eat meat and us swallow saliva. Okay, that’s fair enough.

You made much sense at first. With familiarity that comes with closeness I started neglecting your service and one day, like all days the in-laws come calling I was caught without a guard. I had no gear and I was doing a four and the adrenaline was nothing imaginable. Then we rolled.  My knees got soaked, not because of kneeling but because of the hard surface landing that I had no clue about to happen. Again, that day doctors were on strike. Such coincidence was unfair to put it mildly.

The first wife is normally the true love. My instinct had it that even if time will come for us to part, I’d never move on. Because you represented my spirit, my effort and determination. When I see you I remember ancient civilizations and ask why Africa wants rushed modernization rather than going the whole hog bit by bit like any other respectable empire of old.

Perhaps I will never love another like I did you. They might be improved but you were the original copy. The serious machine that taught me to limp on after falling and the itching headlong of a wound that left a permanent scar that everything is possible for those who believe.

But then again it is your brevity that emboldened my bravery. Somehow you connected me with the contours in my life and made me take another direction. 
*All photos for this story are from  https://www.bajajauto.com/motor-bikes#