“Demolition of Nyakatsi”

The date and time sometimes matters not, what matters is what you do with that date and time. Just as we were ushering in the new millennium, there were lots of things many of us thought of doing, some chose the easy ones, others chose the tough ones and yet others chose what looks impossible; that said and done, life goes on. Yesterday was today and tomorrow will be today, for that matter, we look at the past and the future and judged them basing on the present. Diaspomana and I made a resolution never to live with “Nyakatsi” anymore; I suppose, those who decided likewise must have “stolen” our idea after all! The only uphill task was “eating” on empty stomachs for the duration of “rebuilding”! As I was saying, at the ushering of this millennium, some of us made adecision not to “enter” into it with the dreaded “nyakatsi”. To beprecise, it was Diaspoman’s idea, backup up by a one Karazayi, whodecided that, if we happened to pass away then, we would never have gone to heaven; reason being that, we still possessed the “nyakatsi” (KAFIRI) on us! Yes, some of you must be wondering or asking me to get straight to the point, but what if the point is not straight anyway? Never mind,I love Diaspoman and always will (though not in the sense of theWazungu), he is always ahead of time. In those years when he had just returned from abroad (sijui Malekani au Bulaya), he was always full of ideas and one of those Ideas was for him to go and shed his “nyakatsi”, he sold the idea to us and we fell in line. After all, who would not? Ten years down the road, there is no looking back, many have began walking in our footsteps, we lead and others follow! Though we were not culturally or religiously bound to follow suit, under the stronginspiration of the man from abroad, we chose our path and here we are totell the story. Alright, stop wondering, I am almost there. Karazayi is the guy that played the great role of identifying the right guy that would accomplish the arduous task of ‘demolishing’ the dreaded‘nyakatsi’ and ushering us into the new millennium in style. Thesplendid ‘architecture’ to accomplish the task was none other than ‘Dr Aberi’. Like any operation, we had to plan everything to the dot of time, there was no chance of failure, in such irreversible matter, there is no room for failure, it is either one succeeds or one fails to fail! The operation required some money and time and in those days, both of these items were not as scarce as today. We decided on having the“demolition” exercise carried out on a Friday, reason being that, wewould take Saturday and Sunday to recover from the “shock” of losing the “nyakatsi” and probably, by Monday morning, all would seem to be ok. Again, if there developed any complications, the weekend would have been an ideal time to address any such issues. In our case, it was only planA (no plan B), in such matters, there is only half a coin (one sideonly). (to be continued).