Kenyan Cribs / Me How Am Living

After watching all these shows about how the rich and famous are flaunting their huge mansions, shiny cars, and immense success and wealth on MTV's Cribs and BET's How I'm Living, I decided to come up with a little twist to this concept.

Let's walk into a regular Kenyan's crib and see how they are living ...

I'm Joseph Muchemi and welcome to my house in Buruburu. Me, this is how am living.

Let's start off at the gate. As you can see we don't have one. It was stolen 5 years ago when we had gone to gichagi (the village) for Christmas.

All the windows are protected with huge unsightly burglar proofing. Nobody can come in from the outside without knocking first and hearing me say, "Ingira!" (You may enter). Come to think of it, in case of a fire we don't have a chance of getting out either.

Moving on, this is my sitting room. Nothing here is coordinated or even matching. The big zebra skin drum in the corner takes up all the space. I got the sofas 15 years ago from a fundi in Zimmerman. One leg is broken, but we support it with a Cowboy tin. The chairs all have little square rags arranged like a diamond.

The money plant gives my son asthma, but I have to keep it running across the ceiling on a kamukanda (string) for no particular reason. I'm hoping one day it will bring me some money. Kana tigwo? (Isn't that so?) It is also very useful for hanging Christmas cards.

I have a pile of Newsweek, Drum, and True Love magazines on the shelf. The newspapers are less coz I sold them to Kariuki the local dealer last month for 18 a kilo.

As we move into the kitchen, the fridge is quite noisy, but IGNORE IT IF YOU CAN. I'LL TRY TO SPEAK LOUDER. THERE IS HALF A LOAF OF AKIDA BREAD, A BLUE BAND TIN WITH A DEADLY JAGGED EDGE WITH SOME TRACES OF BLOOD - wait - AKINYI HOW IS YOUR FINGER NOW? IS THE TILAPIA READY? - ok - THE FREEZER IS FULL OF GITHERI STUFFED IN USED AKIDA PAPERS.

The tap on the kitchen sink is tied up with a piece of bladder. The constant drip, drip, dripping made me very annoyed. So I took the bladder from the outside tap and tied it here. If you want to drink some water, go to the outside tap.

Walking upstairs you will notice the floor is slippery. That is because we polish the floor every week. Once my wife came from upstairs to downstairs in a hurry and not in the natural way. One leg was leading the way and the other one was over her shoulder. The loud bumping and the screaming made the watchman, Luka, come and ask "Mama, umeumia?" (Mama, are u hurt?). The curtain does not cover the corner of the window so Luka had seen the whole thing from outside.

My bedroom is the biggest of course. What do they call it? Oh yah - the master bedroom. The sheets and pillow cases have never, ever looked like each other. I have 5 briefcases all in the corner that are gathering dust. I am never invited to meetings at work so I have not used them yet. My closet has three tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows. As you can see the buttons are the size of my big toe. Very classic. That was the fashion from '72-'81. I hope it comes back.

The toilet is broken right now. I placed a karai (basin) on the toilet seat so nobody uses it. They may run away when they see the githeri that refuses to flush. Our toothbrushes are in a cup I won at the Nairobi show in 1976.

Ok - you have seen my crib, now let's go see my ride.

Muchemi walks to the Bustop, pandas a 23 and he is off to tao.