If I Were A Beyonce
Take a minute and enjoy my fantasy
You go to sleep as a random person, as a Muthoni or a Mwende. No one gives you a goodnight kiss, because this is Kenya. Goodnight kisses here are still fairly foreign, like Fenty Cosmetics or gay rights. Ata umesahau kuomba. Then, somewhere in the middle of this random night, in this unbearable Nairobi heat, while you're probably having a random bad dream (the one where you're just about to pee and flush: a classic, that one), weird shit starts happening to your body. It doesn't stop. You're too busy holding your mkojo in dream land, though, so you snore through everything.
You wake up forty five minutes later than usual. You slept through all your five alarms. Usually, unaziskianga zote unaziassume, lakini today you heard nothing. Today, it feels like you're slipping into your body after someone handed it back to you. This person went to the gym and did bench presses and squats all night, while Nicki Minaj or Queen Latifah was playing in the background.
In another alternate universe, different from this, already alternate universe, you'd sit in bed for another five hours, wasting daylight, wading through unnecessary thoughts, like 'what's the point of education alafu nikose kazi?' or 'Uhuru anaweza kunywa shot ngapi za pombe bila kubleki?'. You're good at that. Distractions, heh. You're a pro.
But you have class (not the fancy kind), and you took out Helb to finance your, ahem (clears throat in rachetness), extracurricular college life. You might as well guarantee yourself a possible future where you'll pay it back in full. You pull your sore bag of organs up from bed, first off to pee, then to shower so you can smell good for your imaginary uni boyfriends.
You've always had a thing for standing naked next to a mirror since your wee wee days in raima, when your mother used to bathe you and fit you into your tusmall clothes. You miss boshoris and beanies. You're just the right amount of self-absorbed though, nothing chronic enough to be a bitch about. You enjoy the view.
Sasa, the problem is today. Today, while fresh from a hot shower, after scrubbing yourself down with a loofah so your body cells can pick up on the fact that you're awake, your eyes pick up on long wet flowing blonde hair before finally gluing themselves to the glass, begging you to rationalize whatever's in front of you. The rest of you, however, simply refuses to believe them.
It takes you a fine second to finally ask yourself what Blue Ivy's mother is doing in your bedroom. It takes you a fine glance at your dripping-wet features to realize that Mama Ivy is not only confined to the glass, but is somehow part of reality now.
You're probably seeing things, you start to try and make sense of the situation. Maybe it's something you ate. Ama bado ni usiku na umelala. Lakini you've never had a dream that was so vivid before. You don't take drugs. No one in your house is this tech literate, and all of them are frankly too lazy to pull anything so impressive like this on you.
Yeah, you're probably asleep. You might as well just roll with it, whatever this is.
After fifteen minutes of trying out your clothes, zile zinakuwanga kwa that chair everyone has, you're finally forced to open your closet and dig in for something. Hakuna kitu inakutoshea. Your boobs are too big. Ata the large mum jeans your mum gets you every Christmas don't let you breathe because you have hips for days, wueeh. Shoes ni tusandals pekee.
You roll yourself back into your towel, your mind set on ravaging your elder sister's closet now that yours is too small for you.
By now, your body's feeling great by the way. Kama mti imesimama straight in full sunlight. Photosynthesis. You've never felt your heart beat so vividly before.
You simply cannot wait to meet someone and see them hyperventilate.
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