The Bachelor

There are a few things I really enjoy about living alone, or living single if you like. I routinely get away with things that you would never dream of doing if there were other people living in the same house with you.

For instance there are those mornings when I wake up in such high spirits and all I need is some good music to get me dancing so hard that I surprise myself.

I will start with one wild jig in the bedroom, before dancing my way to bathroom. Since I can’t hear the music under the shower, I just go ahead and create my own music cocktail.

In one moment I will be singing a few words from Tithimah! before switching to Abiro gi diel achiel and since I am a cafeteria Anglican I won’t end my bathroom –spine show before singing Tukutenderezza Yesu .

Something else. When you live alone you don’t even need a towel around the middle as all the curtains are always tightly drawn ………No! No! I know what you are thinking and you are dead wrong! I don’t dance naked like Jack Songo the king of nightrunners!

Anyway from the bathroom I will dance to the sitting room, jump on the coffee table for another jig and generally feel good about it.

Now you can’t do all this when you have guests in the house and this has been my problem for the last three days.

What happened is that a family friend who was travelling out of the town asked me to take in her two little daughters for the duration of her absence. You can’t very well go around dancing on the top of tables and chairs top with two small girls watching – they will think their uncle Philip has gone bananas.

My life was thrown into a crisis as soon as the girls moved in. First they went to investigate the state of my kitchen with the eldest, a very bright kid, leading in exploration.

She immediately discovered a few problems. There was only one cup, a tin of Rahacafe and sugar. I patiently tried to explain to her that I survive only on coffee because the doctor put me on a special diet for life.

We were lucky to end up with a half a dozen plates which still had the supermarket labels for the simple reason that I have never found any use for them.

We also came across a couple of sufurias with their labels still intact too. But when it came to what and how to cook, things got really complicated.

I wasn’t sure the stove would work – it’s long time since it was used – when I make coffee I just plug in an immersion heater and my breakfast is as good as ready.

We took off to ZamZam Supermarket situated in the neighborhood and the bill came to something of a shock. You see when you have a career of stopping at a fast food joint for chicken and chips you tend to forget what it takes to put together a meal.

I am not used to having dependants whose stomachs I’ve got to take care of. So in the morning I left and when I got to work I remembered I hadn’t left money for the girls so I had to dash over at lunch time.

I banged the gate several times with mounting impatience. When the oldest of the girls finally turned up, it was to inform me she had misplaced the keys. I am not very good at pleading but I did it all the same with one little problem. The girl is named after my mother so I call her ‘’mum’’.

I was saying ‘’Mum, please open up for me. I am going back to work and I’ll be late’’.

There was this neighbor who was working on his motorbike and he looked at me puzzled. I understood why. It is not every day you come across a full-grown man pleading with his mother to open the gates for him at mid-day.

Eventually the girls found the keys. It transpired that after securing the gates in the morning when I had left, she put the keys in her jacket pocket and forgot all about them. Phew!

The writer is a Journalist working with KBC in Migori County. You can contact him through philipmiyawa@gmail .com