some kind of jungle

No. This is not a post about the corporate world or any ish like that. Nope. What I need you to do, is go make some chai – some strong chai, then come back and sit down for this kelele. Make sure it’s black tea, then get some tangawuzi, and add it in so that the kawowo can drift into your nostrils as you read.

Yesterday started out well. Very well actually. I’d managed to get a lot of things that were on my to-do list (read: 2 out of 7 things, yes that is a lot – and no my standards have not dropped). So here I am, for the first time in weeks feeling like, I gat this, I can do this… That evening I went for a happy hour – dubbed WAPpy Hour (I know! Wappy sounds so cute – I bet you said it in your looney toons voice, didn’t you? Tehehe… It has nothing to do with that beloved Saturday morning cartoon show. It’s part of the InterVarsity Graduate Fellowship that I attend).

Chatting is happening all around me, people catching up, others meeting other people for the first time, my focus was on the food table – there is that kachumbari read salsa that has mango in it – Yo! Any day of the week!!! So we are talking and then someone says:

The deer are coming out…

Me: 

Every bone in my body was now alert… I would have said antenna but really what would an antenna be doing on your body? As if a dudu? So much talk about kingdom Animalia happening on this blog today, but wait, does dudu belong to kingdom Animalia or Insecta.

Dang! I digress…

So I silently thought to myself, they must have escaped from the zoo or a game park in that area. Hmmmmph! Mwana wange, take another sip and listen to this tale!

Zoo? Nassing!
Game Park? Nassing!

They live in the park.

My mind was now actively refusing to believe this reality. Next guess where this park is – behind my school. I mean a stone throw away from my school.

No. Because you are probably thinking that my school is in a kyalo. No! In the city. see-teh. The next evening, another person remarked about how he had seen one in downtown.

Okay, let me take a step back… Have you ever been in Javas or Cafesserie or on a game drive in Masai Mara or lining up to bungee jump above the Nile and then you hear someone smugly say:

TIA

*Rolls up sleeves* Nugu ki??????? As I pull on my ear lobe!! I just need someone to say that to me again. Come and say it to my face-o. Come and tell me-o. Come…  

T.I.A.

If you are reading this and you do not know what TIA is – (insert Gabrielle Union’s voice – because my inside-my-head voice is Gabrielle Union’s voice) Awwww… Look at you… So cute… So sheltered. TIA is This is Africa – this is a pass that some people use in a sometimes derogatory way, sometimes joking way. It’s Africa (read: not developed or literate) do not expect too much…

For some reason, my mind still hoped that these two people from different circles of life were just pulling an elaborate joke on me.

Alas. On. My. Way. Home.

In. The. City.

There chewing on grass in the park, was a cousin of the Impala (It’s my blog, I can anoint cousins when I feel like). It was as if God was also in on it too. On the next turn, boom! 4 more cousins of the Eland eating grass.

Imagine for a second, you roll into the parking lot at Javas Kisementi. You walk around the car to open the door for your person (because chivalry is not dead). As you walk into the almost-always-crowded-and-loud-branch of Javas, you spot a family of Antelopes grazing in the park below.

No. This is not in Queen Elizabeth National Park.

In the city

Roll back to the day before the day before yesterday, the conversation that sparked this blog post: someone says,

Yeah, remember when there was a fox in your backyard….

You are probably thinking they meant:

Nope…

A fox.

Image Source: Google & Giphy

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