Report From Friday’s Nyama Choma

There were three Kenyan events over the week-end. The nyama choma, the Märsta boogie dance and the Kirigo Prayer meeting on Sunday evening. It was a long week-end which began on Friday with the “meet the wedding couple” nyama choma function at Norsborg. The turn-out was respectable and after a considerably long time, it was nice to meet and talk to Kenyans who have been at large for a long time. The event was well organized and it was easy to identify who was in control of the situation.

There was plenty of nyama and the ugali was cleverly wrapped “in balls” (using aluminum foil) and this technique smoothened the service all the way, complete with Kachumbs. If you wanted it, there was even water in bottles brought at the park for those who wanted to wash their hands before chewing otherwise majority of Nyama choma fans just zoomed into the meat without washing their hands.

There was no toilet in the vicinity and people kept on making trips to a near-by bush (especially the men) then returning to chew. Some cleaver Kenyans were not giving out their bare hands to be shaken at random and instead, facilitated contact with clenched fists, probably to avoid unwashed fingers that had just shaken stuff (aka mzinga) at the near-by bush if you know what I mean.

As usual, one could notice new faces within the crowd although not much introduction was forth-coming. Word has it that there is a general fear among new arrivals in Stockholm especially when it comes to making open contacts with “war veterans” or other strangers.

“War veterans” are Kenyans who have fought many battles, both with individuals and the system and survived. They first fought “the war of the papers” and after romping to victory, they have been fighting different “interpersonal wars” with various degrees of successes and failures.

Some old enemies did not even say high to each other and throughout the function, they kept a good distance from one another. There was no fear of a new war breaking up at the function because respect appeared to have been in the air. I prayed that a certain lady doesn’t come at the place because she called KSB to say that if she meets a certain enemy who was at the scene, she would strip her naked because the lady had tried to snatch her man. She never came!

Different Hand Shakes
I tried to shake hands with everybody (over 50 people were there). There were three kinds of hand-shakes. There was the heavy one with lots of enthusiasm patched on the face, a sign that things were good. In this kind of hand shake, one hesitated to chat a bit and to enquire “how things were going”. This is the hand shake you get from a Kenyan “in your good books”.

Then, there was the quick one in which the only thing you could say was “sasa?” before moving on. In this case, the shake was equally satisfactory but you moved on quickly to catch other hands. These are Kenyans you don’t have a lot of contact with and you only meet at public places. When you have a function, you don’t even remember to contact them even via sms.

Then, there was the hand shake that could be an imitation of the real thing. It’s cold and sometimes, it’s just the tip of the fingers that get in contact. It’s equally swift and says a lot that things are really bad. I did not get these kinds of handshakes although at one point, a middle-aged woman nearly gave me her finger nails to shake.

I suspected that she was unhappy because of an earlier KSB story (scandal) combined by an incident when I failed to make it at her place when she had a function. She used to greet me well and even swing over a hug but since the scandal exploded at KSB, she has changed. I did not make it at her place for her ka-function because I had “conducted a Cabinet reshuffle” of my friends and relegated her to the periphery as I put her under observation. She has not yet made it to my black book yet but you never know!

I understand that she confronted the agent whom she suspected brought the scandal at KSB and that things went really bad because of the Mchongoano that ensued. The suspected agent is said to have gone an extra mile and publicly exposed scary skeletons from her cupboard. She is reported to have been extremely shocked with the revelations.

I saw another Kenyan who has been very jolly but who did not look happy, as if there is some underlying frustration, a serious problem or a huge crisis affecting the ka-life. You don’t have to stop and ask “What is the problem?” The Kenyan could be cooling off at the debt collection agency or undergoing a mid-life crisis so it’s always better to wait for the victim to tell the story.

Other Kenyans have featured at KSB scandals and when they see me, they avoid all talk because they fear that any sentence may give away further intel which could be used at the site for useless entertainment or propaganda. All in all, it was a fantastic moment.

The event was not just an adult affair. Kids were running around playing endlessly as their parents charted away the evening. Towards 19 hrs, it became cold and fire had to be lit.

It was nice seeing Kenyans who have been in confrontation with each other shaking hands as though they were buddies. There was a lot of respect and even though the event went up to 2.00 hrs, there was no serious incident that could be reported.

Cute Rwandese Girls at Boogie Dance
The consumables were going at very affordable prices. It looked more like a pre-wedding get together without the element of fund raising featuring conspicuously. In fact, a visitor could not tell what was happening because there were no speeches.

According to an agent, the Management decided to cut off speeches to avoid controversy because of the tendency of Kenyans to try and “address the crowd” even if one has no constructive message to impart.

When they get zonked, others have the tendency of trying to germinate trouble especially when an enemy is the one giving a speech. You could try and boo the enemy or shout to the effect that he or she “is talking rubbish”.

The speaker could then warn the heckler to shut the big mouth and before you remember the emergency number, people are on one another’s throats so it was good without speeches. Sometimes, the speaker completes the speech by putting up with the heckler but immediately it’s done, the speaker confronts the enemy and a fight breaks up. Some Kenyans kept very low profiles and, at some point, you could think that something was disturbing them.

I learnt about a Kenyan who quit drinking and took up the Lord Jesus as his personal savior. He was doing very well because he was ready to talk openly about his salvation which was good. I wished him well.

KSB has been very cool during the last three weeks and some Kenyans wanted to know “what has been cooking”. The explanation is that I have been working on my “Ebook design” (on top of my daily routines) and many tales have had to be kept safely in the blog’s cooling system.

I left the venue early enough with a close friend to catch the boogie dance in Märsta. After parking the car, we were received by Marky. As the dance went deeper into the night, a group of about 25 cute Burindian girls arrived at the scene and took over the floor. Their swings were only rivaled by those of the Latino girl who is getting lots of attention in facebook at the moment.

Okoth Osewe

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Makozewe

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A blog for News and Events happening around Kenyans in Stockholm.

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