Ni Promise Hutakasirika

Nobody in this city has ever said those words before good news. Not once in the history of Nairobi has someone grabbed your hand, looked you in the eye, said “promise me you won’t be angry,” and then announced that they have cleared your rent. The phrase exists for exactly one reason: to give your soul a two second warning before it exits through the top of your head.

And it never comes alone. Bad news here arrives wrapped like something from Gikomba, layer upon layer, and by the time you reach the middle it is one sock. First they ask how you are. Then how work is. Then whether you have eaten. My friend, a Kenyan asking about your appetite at 10:47pm is not worried about your nutrition. They are checking whether your stomach is strong enough to receive impact.

The friend version is John. John calls and says, very calmly, “buda angalia WhatsApp kidogo.” John has never in his life used the word kidogo about anything small. You open it and there is one message, “ulinipatia ndege ama gari?,” and beneath it a photo. Just a photo. No caption, no explanation, no context, because John is a coward who has outsourced his confession to a camera. And there, in flash lighting, at an angle that suggests he took it while crouching and possibly crying, is your rear door, folded inward like a Weetabix wrapper. He then types, “but the car is fine.” The car is in the picture, John. We are both looking at it.

The mother version is slower and more dangerous, because she opens with love. Umeamka? Umekula? Uko na baridi? Then, softly, “kuna kitu kidogo.” Small. Small has no measurement in that house. Small is a cousin arriving with three suitcases and a mattress for “wiki mbili tu,” and the two weeks started during a previous administration, and now he has opinions about how you arrange your fridge.

But the babe version is a different sport entirely. It begins with typing. Then the typing stops. Then it starts again, then it stops, like someone standing at the edge of a swimming pool negotiating with God. Then: “Ni promise hutakasirika.” Brother, your heart immediately starts doing hill repeats on Kingara Road. Your chest is now a construction site. You are sweating in a way that has nothing to do with weather, doing forensic accounting on your last three weeks, wondering which sin has finally matured like a fixed deposit. You type “promise” with fingers that belong to another man. She takes four more minutes. Four. You age visibly. And then she reveals that she used your card to do her nails, or she told her mother your full names, or she has invited Cindy to stay “for a few days” in your one bedroom in Kinoo. And you laugh, but the laugh is damp, because in those four minutes you had already ended the relationship, moved out, and started attending a new church.

The training for all this started in boarding school anyway. Prep time, silence, teacher on duty peeping through the window like a hawk with a marking pen, and someone leans over from the next desk and whispers, “umesimama ama umekaa?” You are seated. You have been seated for two hours. But the question is not about furniture, it is about structural integrity, and you already know your Chemistry paper has done something unforgivable.

The correct answer, obviously, is to never promise. Say “sema kwanza.” Say “let me hear it while standing.” But we never do. Someone asks us to sign a waiver on our own peace and we sign it, in permanent ink, and say “ni sawa tu, si it’s fine.”

So how do you do it? Do you say umesimama ama umekaa? Do you feed them first? Do you send the photo and switch off your phone like John? Or are you the type who says nothing and lets them find out on their own? Confess below, we are all guilty here.