When I leave the house at 03:00h, my objective is to pursue a purpose. Or happiness. Or to run away from boredom. I wonder what boredom I could be running away from at 03:00h, but then here I am, hurrying on the tarmac, away from home.
Home. That word doesn't mean much to me. It simply means that I have left my girlfriend of three years lying naked in bed, completely oblivious of my absence.
As I hurry away dressed in a shirt two sizes larger than me, shorts and a pair of slippers, I see her in my head turning and stretching her hand in a bid to hug me. She hugs me in her sleep most nights even though she rarely hugs me during the day when she's awake.
The road on which I walk is lined with trees on both sides, trees which are being blown to and fro by the night wind prompting the leaves to swoosh about in a rhythmic rustle.
It is not dark. Not really. Even though I can't see the moon in the night sky, a beam of light appears to illuminate the earth from heavens above.
It's like the angels are looking down at me from above and saying, "there he walks. He who has an abundance of thought but lacks the wisdom to see his path in life. He who paces around in the dark. Let's illuminate a path for him."
And as I walk in the path laid out for me by the angels, I think about my life and all the decisions I made that led to this cowardly moment.
Where did I go wrong? Did I choose the wrong career? Did I fall in love with a woman who didn't see me? Understand me? Who wouldn't stop until she imposed her every will upon me? Until I was all her and no longer me? Did I let people walk all over me a little too much?
I need to change. I need to be somewhere where nobody knows me. Maybe then I stand a chance at a clean start. It is never too late to start again. It is never too late to bring out a clean slate. A blank canvas on which to paint a brand new painting. Of anything or anyone I want.
I must have dunked too deep into my own thoughts because when I come to, it is 05:00h and inexplicably dark. The angels have denied me their light completely.
I can't see a path ahead of me and even the trees won't dance anymore. Not only have the angels withheld their light, they have taken back their breathe too.
And so I stumble on in the dark, in the silent dark shadows like a rodent. Knowing full well that I can't go back home now. I wouldn't know how.
Then a police patrol car stops me and I am arrested and bundled into a tiny cell with many others. I am a vagabond loitering with intent to disturb the peace. Whatever that means.
My personal effects are recorded in the occurrence book to include a black leather wallet with a passport size photo of a young female in her mid twenties who I explain is my girlfriend. Ex girlfriend if she wakes up in an hour to find me gone never to return. In my wallet is also a picture of an elderly lady (my mother), a baboon that has just escaped the zoo (me) and a child (my only nephew).
In the wallet are the arrested person's identity card, voter's card, credit cards and two five hundred shillings notes. All these are noted down in the book.
I am also made to leave behind one slipper (the left one) and my bag containing my laptop and it's charger and my mobile phone.
During the two hours I spend in that cell with about thirty other people, I meet Mwove. He is about my age (29), but way too heavyset.
He has sagging flesh everywhere from the back of his head, to his throat, to his arms, he has male boobs, a gargantuan belly, buttocks that no man should be proud of and even his fingers appear to be sagging with extra fat. I hate him.
Not because he is fat but because he talks too much. He won't shut up.
And he talks about everything from the last time he got laid (an hour ago according to him), to the inexplicable human behavior of hiding behind metaphysics when faced with something they can't explain.
He condemns his wife for leaving him and taking his two years old son with her. He condemns his girlfriend for talking to his friend too much and he condemns the side woman he slept with an hour ago for getting his condom torn. And we all wonder how she managed to do that. If that was her fault or the condom's.
Then an officer comes to the door and yells that all those arrested during the night for being drunk and disorderly, loitering and all other minor offences should pay two thousand shillings and go home. And consider themselves lucky that the OCS's bout of diarrhoea had disappeared and he is hence in a better mood or we would have all paid five thousand shillings each.
And out of thirty people in the cell, Mwove turns to me asking, no; demanding that I give him a thousand shillings. And I ask him why he thinks that (a) I have that kind of cash with me; and ,(b) I would give it to him if I did. He's a complete stranger to me.
He explains that it is just a thousand shillings and it'll make my life a whole lot easier to just give it to him so that he can settle with the cops. And I tell him nicely that I have to think about myself too.
To which he says, "You're young and fit. You can survive in this cell a while longer than I can. I am fat and claustrophobic and very soon, I'll have a chest lock. Then I will inconvenience everyone because I'll have to be rushed to the hospital. Also there are people out there depending on me and I can't afford to be in here any more."
"So you're saying that your life is more important than mine?" I have phrased it as a question but it really is a statement.
"Yes." Mwove says. "That is exactly what I am saying. Just a thousand shillings brother. And I'll make your life easier."
And of course I ask him nicely to shove it.
The officer comes back to the door and calls three names of the people whose turn it is to pay the piper. Mwove's name and mine are called.
He queues ahead of me and when he is handed his wallet by the officer at the reporting desk, he shoves it in my face showing me a thick stack of thousands inside it.
"What? You thought I was poor? I have enough to feed you and your family, to pay for your children's school fees and to even let you wipe your behinds with once you have visited the bathroom to relieve yourselves off the weight of my feed. I am not poor young man. I wouldn't be poor to save my own life. Even God himself wouldn't catch me poor if He wished and begged."
And I tell him that he's the worst kind of a human being there is. He that would manipulate others into thickening his already thick wallet.
"This world is a jungle son." He says. "You either have it all, or you have nothing. And one of these days, I'll swallow you whole. You don't belong on this food chain."
And he pays up and leaves. And I pay up and my personal effects are handed back to me.
But on my way out of the police station, I realize that my laptop has disappeared. The laptop in which I have saved all my work, my writing, my pictures, my entire life. It is gone.
Of course I suspect Mwove but he's too far gone by now.
So I put the empty backpack on my back and keep moving. That is what I am ready for. To keep moving. To keep searching.
The angels may deprive me of their light, they may keep their calming breathe to themselves and they may even send demons to rob me blind, but in pursuit of betterment for me and all that I desire to be, I have to keep moving. To keep forging a way forward.
I have to establish a life that doesn't involve spending eternity with a woman who'll only hug me in her subconscious, away from a career imposed upon me by parents because of an education imposed upon me by those very parents, away from a society that would only deem me a man if only I donned a suit and tie day in day out in search of my daily bread, a society which calls me a boy when they see me in shorts and slippers, a society that doesn't see me but rather their illusion of me.
So Dear Lord, as I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, hear not my heart that beats in terror of the unknown but my heart that beats in the excitement of anticipating the unknown. As I walk through enemy territory, dodge lions' jaws and bullets from robbers, as I outrun the enemies who would want to drag me back to the past, walk with me. For I have to keep moving if i am to achieve the goal for which you created me.
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Inspired by Bob Marley's "Keep on Moving"
