Word Around Hair in the Nostril

by MazubaMwiinga

I didn’t hear that;

Very surely so I didn’t hear it; It was a reverie from last night’s winery taste. The beams of light flashed my face so much that I couldn’t see clearly what stood before me. I wanted to sit but my bottom was so hot, standing and jogging were the only remedies, so said my friend who has already packed bag and baggage en-route Ngabwe.

Couldn’t it be that the sensations of last night’s social merry-making injected the better of me? But how could it be when the whole of my life I have been the king of the hall; the master mimic and cherry babe dancer, but never in a day did I walk home zig-zag like a running stitch patching the bottom side of my Sunday best shots? Worse still failing to find my stool!

Like Eshu the Confunser of Men, from Imprisonment of Obatala, I started to mistake shopping malls to mountains and tarmac roads to rivers swollen to the banks with water. At one point I almost dived in, in my effort to swim across – thank goodness for the beaming light of oncoming vehicle – It could have been twakalinabo. I now realised why my friend was so anxious to move to Ngabwe before plots are all taken up. My step was in such muddle! I crave for Nega-Nega instead, at least the odour of soup ya Mbuzi can quench my ravenous appetite that come with this ooze of the effects of wining and dining.

But what I failed to understand him is the malicious ignominy he so often likes taking me for walks. For once I thought he thought I didn’t know this place so well enough for me to sit and relax. But last night, I was stammering like one whose left brain side was pinched with garlic powder. Then he whispered the word – I almost puked!

How on earth can that be? For the sake of the majesty innovation of ancient times, the son of a beer brewer must sojourn henceforth to his abode and leave me alone! Is there no article in the holy book that demands that one of his kinds must be para-trooped by the belt to their habitat?

The monkey feeder must not stick his shoe where his fingers must go. Who is there to relieve me of this nagging hair in my nostril…!  

Time and Fear Factor

by Mazuba Mwiinga

Thank goodness!

Isn’t social chatting getting locked-up? Like changing a radio transmission signal; pew it evaporates in thin air? Great isn’t it? Of course it will spare Mark Z from the tauntingly and embarrassingly shameful discourse of graffiti that get to the walls from this callous end.

Imagine reading a post swollen with misspelled thoughts from a teacher, worse still a journalist who grammatically mislays words like ‘their’ and ‘there’. It’s like a Ninja movie where you see all the Bruce Lee faces weighing each other;

 ‘Who are you?’

‘I am Lee’

‘Lee who?’

‘John Lee’

‘Why are you John Lee?’ – And instantly, its ‘dishi-dishi-dishi’ a fight erupts. Silly isn’t it? But the fear in the grilling made us eye-balls to the small screens with peace!

Better than reading the filthiest and acrimoniously sordid updates that appear on Mark’s innovation. How absurd! But with the new version of venoms just spat, relief has settled on my shoulders, lest I am mistaken for being one of that gentleman’s posse. With peace of mind I will enjoy my glass of Cellar Cask with broad smiles.

What pinches my nerves however is the mark of the beast; kindly don’t tell this to my fellow Adventists; mark of the beast scares the hell out of their tongues. It reminds me of the ghosts in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Little did I know that, those boring deep books I was forced to read by Fr. Carol S.j in high school, created a third eye in my skull.

It’s so foolish if you understand my line of folly here, though no prizes for guessing what I am alluding to. For instance you get to hear and then act based on what you have heard, how would you define that? Government Inspector or Merchant of Venice or A Man for All Seasons?

That’s the reason writers are devils; at least in the context of a Christianity that interprets the slashing of a pound of fresh from someone laying wreaths on a tomb just after overnight prayers you piously  attended as being a sign of devout Christianity. Pew!! But if you ask me where these writers get their powers to foresee, I would say ‘wait a minute’.

Like Revelations in which John saw the mark of the beast rising from the sea; I too saw a footage with a man confidently breathing out verity; then I watched a proclamation beaming out from another head whipping the entire sea with gluttonous clout. I listened with impeccable attention and then read a verbatim spread before me of another admission from the same mouth; pray for me none of these made sense. If it was an audit of accounts, the figures couldn’t tally. There was a missing link.

Hadn’t school teach me that one plus one plus one is equal to three? But the footage and the proclamation and the verbatim didn’t add up. There was a shortage. Was it an equation for Fear factor? Where, if Y = Fear + Clout, then Y = …….? Where are the modern Einsteins?

Shouldn’t I now believe the character Lucy in the movie Lucy, for saying one plus one is NOT two, because the only thing that matters in this life is TIME and everything else is just an illusion? I am scared. Aren’t you? In such moments the Government Inspector who is said to come incognito messes up workers’ pants – why? While a man’s silence in A Man for All Seasons, gives the King sleepless nights – why? And a woman who appears as a man in Merchants of Venice makes the money lender cry before the jury – why? Isn’t Fear the master sign of inequities?

In Julius Caesar’s times as King of Roman Empire, the apostles devised a coded language to outsmart the King. Shrewdly John contrived the biblical ‘beast’ bearing those three digits which actually meant something so as to go round the King; but it scares the Adventist like hypothetical hell; isn’t ignorance indeed not a defence?

The footage I saw, is it the TIME that Lucy says is all that matters? And the rest is just fear factor? What am I saying anyway? DAMN…! Was I dreaming? ….kkkkkk

Life evolves…