Tea bonus payout is around the corner, and so are the usual mishaps that go with the season. Grizzled tea farmers who have been slaving all year long in soggy farms will be trooping to banks for crisp notes. And so will be yellow yellow ladies of the night whose manicured fingers have never picked a single bud of tea.
‘Murima’ folks usually say that one can’t earn money under the sun and spend it under the sun. After getting the mullah, our long suffering tea farmer will hit Wakulima Bar to thank himself. A damsel blinking like a malfunctioning Christmas light will beckon at him. One wink, a few drinks, and our farmer will be snuggling upstairs with a cutie he met a few hours ago.
Alcohol often lies to men that they can run marathons instead of sprints. Halfway through what we’ll politely call a ‘horizontal sprint,’ our geezer will realize the days he used to be a real simba are long gone. What to do? Well, he will squint at his kabambe and dial up a local hustler who deals in little blue pills that promise to make wababa roar.
We all know how this story ends. An unidentified elderly man will be found sprawled on the floor of a dinghy room, having gone to meet his ancestors in his finest hour. Some hours later, cameras will zoom in on the scene: mismatched slippers, a towel rougher than an uncured ox hide, and a frayed blanket that looks like it survived the Mau Mau war. It sure is a sad way to exit.
Tea bonuses or not, stories of men giving up the ghost while engaging in horizontal gymnastics are as old as time. The first case of a man exiting in his finest hour is reported in the book of Genesis.
The year is around 2400 B.C. Judah, one of the Jewish patriarchs, has three sons-Er, Onan and Shelah.Poor Er marries a woman called Shelah, but he dies young. Jewish tribal law dictated that a deceased man’s brother must marry his widow to keep the family name going strong. So Judah instructs Onan to marry his late brother’s wife and put her in the family way right away.
Onan happened to be a woke fellow who didn’t want to be summoned to court for child neglect charges in future. But still, he thought the young widow was something. They hadn’t invented prophylactics (Google that) then so he had limited choices. So what did Onan do?
Well, he went down to the honourable duty as commanded by his ol’ man. After the usual preamble, Onan, in his wisdom, waited until he got to a point of no return. When he reached that crucial moment, Onan pulled a fast one, leaving the young window high and dry. What did the good Lord do? He struck him dead right there, ending one of the saddest stories in the Old Testament.
No one sent condolences. Not the chief, not the nyumba kumi elders. So let me take this moment to offer a belated “pole” to the family of Onan.
And to all our tea farmers this bonus season, can we just stick to a celebratory cup of chai, eh?
PS:
This piece first appeared in ‘The Nairobian’.
