Overview

The way love finds you is strange. You are sitting at the café minding your own business and definitely not minding anybody’s business. It is a smoky little place; the kind pf place where nobody will bamboozle you with tea priced at 250 bob. Hell, nah…we don’t do that here. We eat on the cheap, and that being the case, it is a dingy, crowded place. We don’t mind though; we are Mama Njeri’s gang and we are easy like that.

The way love finds you is strange. You are sitting at the café minding your own business and definitely not minding anybody’s business. It is a smoky little place; the kind pf place where nobody will bamboozle you with tea priced at 250 bob. Hell, nah…we don’t do that here. We eat on the cheap, and that being the case, it is a dingy, crowded place. We don’t mind though; we are Mama Njeri’s gang and we are easy like that.

I am sitting at the corner, picking at an ingrown nail on my thump, when this guy slides on the next chair and sits. I don’t even look up because that kind of thing happens all the time. I only look up when the waiter serves him soup and chapo with a plate of chillies on the side. Who’s this guy though? That’s my thing! I am the only person I have met who eats that many chillies, and it is befitting to honor whoever this is with a glance of acknowledgement.

I look up, and who do I see? A stranger with the clearest eyes I have ever seen. He smiles, I smile back, and that’s his cue to get a few words in, edgewise. Quite the talker, I must tell you, although I am wondering whether he talks this much to strangers. I abandon my troublesome thump altogether; and whoever this boy is, he’s got my  full attention.

I could tell you about the fireworks flying, the numbers being exchanged and all that shebang. But I’ll tell you where that bolt of electricity between us found a wall it could not jump over.

So, Man-Njoro was his name. And we happened to click just right, so that when I left the café, the chat was incessant, for days and nights. The phone calls lasted looooong, and we were at that slippery slope where love fills the air.

Until he said something that chilled me in my steps. He texts me and says: “Hey, just in case this becomes a problem in future, I am 17.5 years old.” 17.5??? Shoot!! Shoot me now. Not even an adult? Not even recognized by the chief? Or by the world?

Well, sometimes, you’ve got to love them at a distance, is what I know.

Written by: Mwende Stardust 13th January 2020