Hardly a week passes by without a birthday Party of a Kenyan child or grown up being thrown here or there in Stockholm. In the last 4-5 weeks, I have been invited to at least 4 birthday Parties while I have held one and invited friends. I have already been invited to two upcoming parties and it sounds cute.
At these parties, you get to meet Kenyans and know new ones while you also get an insight into the personal Network of the person throwing the party. Almost all birthday parties are normally “closed circuit” events and attendance is normally by invitation. The process of invitation can be complicated and extremely tricky because some times, a good party could quickly degenerate into a war zone with ballistic missiles being fired without warning.
Obviously, you want to invite all your good contacts at these parties while you hope for nothing short of a good time. A house party is not the place where you expect to see punches flying after a confrontation or even blood being spilled but sometimes it happens.
Another problem with invitations is that sometimes you inadvertently miss to invite a good friend and the miss becomes a liability because the friend begins to think that you have transferred him or her to your black book ie the book of enemies. You meet the friend and the talk is like “you organized a birthday party last time and you never even invited me”. You then begin to explain how you were stressed that week and how the miss has nothing to do with your friendship and blah blah blah.
Another scenario is where you invite someone and he or she doesn’t turn up and doesn’t send any apologies. It is your turn to make conclusions. It still depends. May be you threw an invitation just to test whether a disagreement you had the other day had been personalized and when the person doesn’t show up, you hurry up to transfer the name of the person into your black book or you put him or her “under observation list”. If you are religious, you forgive the person and continue to act according to the guidance of the Holy spirit.
I talked to a friend last Sato and he was telling me that in Stockholm siku hizi, the trend is like you invite me to your party and I don’t come then you wait until I invite you to my party then you “show my party the red card”. That is, you don’t come and you don’t call to make any apologies.
At that point, the game is at a draw. You then begin a “cold war” with the person ie you don’t take contact and begin to behave like he or she doesn’t exist because after all, the ka person doesn’t pay your rent and that kinda “hard talk”.
The same case applies to “Open houses”. You have one and I don’t come or send apologies then you wait until I have one. You don’t come and you don’t send apologies. It has become a tit for tat game or, in better terms, unalipa kisasi.
A MORE DIFFICULT SITUATION
But that is just the lighter part. Concerns are growing on how to deal with another emerging situation. You invite friends and they come then when the Party is at its climax, one of your guests gets a phone call from someone who was not invited and guess what?
The guest proceeds to invite the person, pandisaring vi deadly. Eti “we are really having a good time here and you are missing out big. Akina Osewe, Mberi, Susan, Marky, Man Nzoro, Man Keegan, Munala wa Munala, Sound of Blackness, the MAD Crew, Hamsini group wafariasi and everybody is here. You have to come now because the party is ending in the morning”. Haya!
The second class guest then makes quick transport arrangements and arrives at the Party, sometimes by taxi. As the host, you rush to welcome the new guest and although you recognize that the person had no invitation, you extend affection and invite him or her to join the party. However, you begin kukua na wasiwasi.
This is because you know too well that the kaguy does not agree with a close friend of yours who is present at the Party and you also know that the new guest is a “trouble maker” whom you had yourself excluded from the guest list because you didn’t want shida. The person has a history of ulevi and when zonked, the person has a tendency of getting into useless arguements with everybody, sometimes chokozaring guests with “we mshenzi kwenda huko” talk.
Once the new guest makes contact with the enemy at the Party, things begin to change. Matusi begins as “cool down…. cool down” appeals also begin to pour in. Then suddenly, a guest throws a very heavy matusi that prompts the uninvited guest to jump on the table, in the process, spilling everything in different directions.
“Mimi hamunijui… don’t play with me… who the hell do you think you are?… I can beat you right now” are the kind of hard stuff flying up and down with the voice boxes set to maximum frequency and tuned to clarity. Still standing on top of the glass table that cost you a fortune and where you relax with your tea, coffee or kanyawaji after work watching news on your plasma, the guy is holding a bottle of half-finished whisky on his right hand and waving it in the air, getting ready to strike at anybody. The bottle, that was just a few minutes ago a property you bought from the system to entertain visitors has been converted into a rungu. You begin to panic.
This is happening in your flat and with time, the whole place suddenly becomes a lethal battle ground. You can’t fix a resolution from the United Nations for peace keeping forces to be sent in because there is no time. You have to intervene personally with your limited muscle power.
You rush and get the new guest by the throat in a moment of trying to restore order but the shouting continues with new matusi being spewed without notice. The matusis are so big that they cannot even be published. You realize ya kwamba Kumedhuka.
The new guest is more powerful than you and breaks from your grip to get on a new and lethal attack. The guest who was tusid then adds more fuel into the fire by spilling a drink in the direction of the enemy and before you think about the next step, mangumi are already flying and some neighbors have began to surface to find out what is happening because there is a lot of commotion. It is past midnight and some guests decide to melt from the place to avoid getting into the statistics of “collateral damage”.
A powerful punch meant to flatten the opponent’s face could miss its target and land on your nose or mouth leaving you with a deformed nose or a big and long term mapengo. Getting artificial teeth from a Swedish dentist could be expensive at a time when some of your bills are threatening to get to Inkasso (debt collecting agency) so you dash to safety. After all, you will call Nani and find out how it went.
As the host who has entered into an abrupt crisis, you try to mobilize a small battalion of friends to help with peace-keeping but it is too late because someone has already called the police and blue lights are flashing outside your door. The birthday party has become a big mess and you begin to contemplate the kind of propaganda that will be spreading in Stockholm. You know Osewe was there and you quickly design a “damage control mechanism”. “Bwana Osewe, I know this thing has happened but please, don’t put it in the blog”, you make a kind request. Hi ni ungwana kweli?
Even if you have irreconcilable personal differences with another Kenyan, why use another Kenyan’s Party to settle scores? Don’t get me wrong. The party I threw last week-end ended well and the last guests left in a taxi. But in recent times, the above scenario has played itself in Stockholm on at least two separate occasions when guests were invited to house parties and blood was spilt.
It is not possible to have a community of Kenyans in Stockholm where everybody agrees with everybody but why not keep your differences away especially when a good friend has given you the honor of being at his or her place once in a while so that everybody can take a break and have fun? If you have to sort it out physically, why use your friend’s flat as a boxing ring?
Okoth Osewe
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