I never look forward to Mondays

I'll take one shot for my pain
One drag for my sorrow
Get messed up today
I'll be okay tomorrow

Singing about liquor is not really a way  to progress, but it helps me  boot  on Monday Mornings.

Cause my job's got me going nowhere
So I ain't got a thing to lose
Take me to a place where I don't care
This is me and my liquor store blues("Liquor Store Blues"
(Bruno Mars feat. Damian Marley))

 Monday has always  been my worst as far back as is possible to remember.

 

Our music teacher wanted us to make musical instruments. We had options. You could make a flute from bamboo, shakers from bottle caps, burned in fire then straightened out. Or you could make  a wandindi- it is a kind of a guitar with a drum base made out of stretched  skin. A shaker  would  have been easy but bottle caps were hard to come by.

 The main brew then was Shibuku, which came in yellow  plastic bottles, the kind that is used for battery water now. I had rabbits, but mine were pets, about 25 of them, they had names too so slaughtering one  to get the skin  was out of the question. The only time  I had some slaughtered was  when  ants invade the hatches  and ate them alive. So I needed bamboo.

No one grew bamboo in my area. The closest bamboo plantation was kirangi. Kirangi was  part of the Aberdare  forest where some squatters planted cabbage interlaced  with ganja forest conservation they called it.

I had  a classmate lived in that direction nearby so one Sunday afternoon we decided to go search for  the accursed raw material that  could make music. To say it was a 50km walk would not be a big exaggeration, and by the time I got back home, grandmother wanted to skin me. Worse, the cows  had broken into the farms and fed on a good number of corn heads, the rest had been carried away by baboons. Two of the young bulls were bloated, and while the village vet was  basking in his glory after carrying out a major surgery-piercing their abdomens to let out the air, I run in horror to the back of the house to find my uniform wet from the afternoon rain. A calf had chewed on the sleeve of my good sweater too.

 In those days, children didn’t get depression and high blood pressure and such, it was simplified in one term- rung’athio- I got a  telling off from cucu for having- rung’athio- the following  Monday morning. I had barely finished my tea when the whistle went off- my neighbor always  whistled twice to say-ukaga- meaning unless you fly you will find us ahead.

If Damian Marley and Bruno Mars had had their liquor store blues single then, I’d have sold all my earthly treasure, rabbits  and library and bought a ticket. Coz you can imagine how it felt when I realized I didn’t pack my lunch, nor the hastily made flute.

strange thing, is that as I post this, about midnight, the egesa- the pub in the neighbourhood is playing that same song-... I bet I'll sleep  soundly then.