Odyssey of a heavenly encounter

 

If you see this, it means you got high and you were afraid you would forget what you were experiencing. This is just a reminder, and you called Alela just as a confirmation.

Your mind is playing tricks on you. It is against you in this. Managing to jot this down is a struggle, it’s all about persistence and resilience. Your mind is mixing up the letters of the alphabet. This is the inner being, the guy whose voice you hear when you are thinking to yourself.

The phone rings and you cannot trace its exact location, the direction the buzzing is coming from. Your senses are completely disoriented. Concentration is hard to maintain. You give in, try to sleep it off.

Here we go, as Alela mentioned, there really is no option but to sit back and enjoy the ride. This had me thrilled; he had struck the nail on the head with what I was experiencing. I wanted out but there really wasn’t a way out. I was stuck with it, but it was not really that bad since its forcing me to be happy, to be hysterical, and to keep that smile going. And I give in. I chuckled when I remember high school, the movie about an entire school, teachers and parents included, that got high. Its Saturday evening, you are in your bed typing on your tablet. But how did we get here, how did we (inner being and mind) end up like this? To answer this I have to take you back to Friday.

It’s Friday afternoon, a day every employer dreads. This is a day when nothing gets done and everyone is trying to buy time and push all commitments they had to Monday. Although everyone is striking that busy pose in-front of their monitor, you can tell by the silly smile they are struggling hard to conceal that it’s not business as usual. The only business that gets done on Friday is accepting friend requests on face book, watching that new hot track on You Tube and planning  your weekend. That is until your boss announces you have to come to work on Saturday and you can hear people’s dreams shutter by how grumpy they get. It is like working with kids. Lucky for this particular day, the weekend duty has not yet been called.

 A call comes through as I am in the office. It’s Ken following up on this road trip he was organising. Ken is that friend you’ve known since childhood, he is practically family. It is a friendship rich with history, one that has been through thick and thin. One that has been to the highest point of mount Longonot and spend days in police stations (nothing criminal I promise) and came out unscratched, undeterred.  Your families are friends and you are a familiar figure even to his extended family. He has even featured in some of the family portraits, we go way back. He is a living throwback.

He wants to know how far I have gone in renting up a car. He is not thrilled to hear you are still waiting for feedback. He hangs up and although he has not mentioned it, you can tell he has made a conviction to get the car himself. He is determined to spend his 23 birthday in the outskirts of town, he has saved enough to ensure this. He has also managed to convince his circle of friend to tag along.

A few minutes later, Ken calls again. This time he has gotten some contact for a car renting agency, he wants me to act fast. And I do just that, I call the contact he gave and a lady picks up. We negotiate the terms and once we had agreed on a rate it was all to the nitty gritty of details. As a business man I like to cover all the details, or rather leave no stone unturned as the local truistic daily’s would put it. I suspect this is why he wants me to handle this transaction (kujichocha), and maybe because I have done this sort of thing before.

Everything is running smoothly, the lady demands a copy of my driving license and ID card which is all in order. The car is to come by evening before 7pm and the only hitch we are having is the fact that I did not carry my license. She also wants me to send a deposit of half the rate to book the car, an offer I boldly decline. I try to reason with her, convince her that I will send a copy of my license as soon I get home via mail. It sounds reasonable and the only issue now is the deposit. I demand to see the vehicle first and explain my unwillingness to put my blind trust in her. She does not take that statement well; she mumbles some words in exasperation. What I make out is something to do with the value of the car she is willing to entrust me with but I will not do the same. My efforts to convince her that that is no way to do business are futile and she hangs up.

A few minutes later, it’s Ken again on the line demanding to know what sought of thing I might have said to offend the lady. When I explain to him how it went down, he still wants me to call back see if there is another way this deal can be sealed. He makes it clear that he doesn’t want to lose the chance of getting this car since the rates are below the market rates. I give it another go, I call the agency again, a lady’s voice is on the other end, and the same lady I had spoken to. I suggest that we meet up in town, she is to come with the car and I am to pay the full amount and present the required documents once we meet. She will not have any of that either, explaining that the no vehicle leaves their offices without being booked in a computerised system. All this time I cannot make out why she is making this so difficult. Left with no option, I ask where their offices are located as the only way am paying that deposit is after seeing the vehicle. In a contemptuous tone she indicates some offices in galleria, and accuses me of wasting her time before she hangs up (this is beginning to get on my nerves). By now this is beginning to be suspicious and am glad Ken agrees with me . We fore gore that option. Apparently Ken had gotten recommendation from a friend, Malema. He had given him assurance that the guy is legit. I try calling the number but my call won’t be answered. I conclude they are fraudsters.

Thirty minutes down, I am still making frantic calls to my friends and any connections I have to renting agencies. Ken calls back, explains to me that the lady had spoken to Malema and the car we wanted was no longer available. I can feel this being blamed entirely on me. I assure ken we can’t miss a Morti.

By Friday evening I get an offer from a guy (Gitau) I have previously rented a car from. His rate is just above normal, not really that inflated. All he wants is an additional, refundable 3 thousand, just in case the vehicle is dented and a deposit half the rate. This I don’t have an issue with. Ken also knows the guy. We had become friends after we experienced an accident 2 years earlier in one of his cars; it’s really why we had spent days at a police station, Dog-section Mombasa.

 Coast people usually pass for slow, careful to accomplish with the minutest of effort. That is until you experience an accident at Bombolulu in a voxy and one of the doors happens to fall off. And once you alight to get the door and find it missing, that’s when you realize how lightning fast this guys can be. That all this time we were  taking sluggishness for weakness while it was their greatest strength. Well done Coastarian, you evil geniuses. You had me fooled.

Although he (Gitau) ripped us off, or rather we feel he did, he was willing to give us time to pay for the damages. Even after that we had maintained close contact and even recommended him to our friends.

This was Friday evening, we decided to make payments on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning

 I was woken up by Ken, excited, he ha d gotten another source which came recommended by the galleria lady. Ken had spoken to the guy and had agreed on a rate. Better still he had sent a deposit ( I know rather naïve)I was just to pick the car at gee-vanjee before Ken came up with yet another of his brilliant ideas. He had talked to this new guy (Mustafa) @ TRM and had even promised that I would be sending the full payment amount. Malema had reassured us that he knew the guy as a lady from his office had given him the contact. I obliged and sent the remaining balance and waited for the vehicle to be delivered. Minutes later the driver of the said vehicle calls, and she has allegedly been involved in some accident. To spare you the agony of hearing the lame excuse he tried to extort money from me, I will skip to the part where I hang up(Deeply satisfied I am the one hanging up). And that right there is how we did not get the car for hire. We had been swindled in the deal and trying to reach them on the phone was futile.

We met up with ken to comprehend on the events that had just taken place. It took him a bit longer to take it. It did seem like some scene from a fiction movie. We called Malema who had sent us the contact, I almost collapsed when I heard that he had gotten the number from a newspaper advert. I have not recovered from this shock, not just yet (Malema we really should skin you). We get one of our friends to call the number,  Mustafa is laughing at his achievement, and he reveals he is in kamiti maximum prison. He is a “mundu wa nyuba” and the stereotype is rubbed in.  

This is when Ken revealed he had ordered some muffins with some secret ingredient(for legality issues we cannot mention the secret ingredient). For the dramatic effects sake let’s call this secret ingredient chemical  X, you can relate if you are a child of the 90’s. I took one while Ken took two before we parted ways. We had to call our friends to inform them that the road-trip was off while trying to avoid going into details. Grown men getting hustled is nothing to be proud off.

In the mat heading home that is when the effects of the muffins kick in. Suddenly everything is funny, am laughing at literally everything. And this is how I get myself typing on the bed with all this confusion going on in my head.

I am taken on a journey through life, and I become a philosopher. It is a journey of enlightenment, self discovery and am at peace with everything. I even manage to do a respectful bow to myself with my hands together in a prayer like manner and sigh a ‘Namaste’. I have managed to use faculties of my brain I haven’t explored before, I dig deeper into my darkest being, areas I dint even know existed.

All the secrets to success lay bare before my eyes, I can feel a connection with the greatest being, the all knowing. And I get a taste a drop of this knowledge, and it is heavenly, a bit too much to take in at once. I feel like a monk on a journey to seek answers to life’s questions, its origin, its meaning.

I learn that that to be successful you must be willing to walk away from the crowd, from the people you find comfort in as they rarely challenge you. You have to interact with greater minds but not all great minds but only those that are willing and have a genuine story to share.

I learn that there cannot be creativity without exposure. Creativity is mainly if not only about copying and improving. Case in point, the person who invented aero-planes, the likes of the right brothers would not have done so if they had not seen birds fly the air. The idea of flying came from others flying beings.

I learnt that imagination and be who we are is a result of what we see and hear. Anything you imagine is what you have seen in at one point in your life. Imagination does not come out of a black hole. Anything you imagine is a modification of something you have seen and heard at point in your life. Character is also build from entirely from these and people you relate to. If you are exposed to negativity your thoughts and ideas will be in that line of thought. Your choice of movies and music has a lot to do with how you react and respond to situations more than you know it. You are a product of only what you are exposed to. We become what and who we are not by accident but by what we are exposed to since childhood.

I feel like the biblical Moses who used to pass out and have conversations with god when I come to. I am glad I came to learn so much through such unorthodox methods. I am deeply satisfied, having interacted with the divine being on such a level.