Notes From The Passenger Seat

In which I am asked, for the ninth time this month, what “sawa” means

I want to say up front that she is brilliant. Runs a whole department. Reads contracts for fun. Once told a guy off so cleanly at a bridal shower that people still bring it up. This is not a stupid woman.

This is just a woman with a man in her phone.

Stage One: I Am Subpoenaed. It starts with a screenshot. Always a screenshot. It lands in my DMs at 10:40 pm with the caption “what do you think he means.” What he means is on the screen. He has typed “sawa.”.There is no second layer yet, here I am being asked to interpret it like it is a dead language recovered from a cave, and because I have a beard (sweet banana asione hii) and a Y chromosome, apparently I am the department of ancient translation.

I tell her the truth. I say, mtu wangu, he means sawa.

Stage Two: I Am Fired. My testimony is inconvenient, so I am dismissed and a second lawyer is retained. That lawyer is her friend from campus who says “aki he is just shy” about a twenty eight year old man who runs a business and negotiates with suppliers daily. Suddenly he is shy. Bashful, even. A whole introvert.

Meanwhile he is online. Very online. Dropping flames under other people’s posts like a man doing community service.

Stage Three: The Renovation. Here is where it stops being funny for me, because she decides the problem is her packaging.

New braids. Gym at 5 am when it is still cold and Nairobi is doing that grey thing it does before sunrise. Nails done. A new perfume she cannot afford. She sends me pictures asking if the outfit is “too much” and I say it is perfect, and it is, and I know it will not matter, because you cannot solve a looking problem with a beauty solution. The man is not looking. He was never looking.

Stage Four: The Logistics. She restructures a Saturday around a “maybe.” Cancels her cousin. Cancels me. Cooks pilau for a man who says “will confirm” and never confirms. Buys the shirt in his size. Sends fare she does not have because he is “stuck.” Then defends the whole operation with a straight face like she is presenting to a board.

The word she keeps using is “supportive.” That is the word she has chosen. Not “invested.” Supportive.

Stage Five: The Prophecy. Somewhere in month five, her aunt has a dream. Something about a wedding and a white dress and a man whose face was unclear. The face was unclear because God, being a serious person, did not want to be quoted in this matter.

Stage Six: The Part Where I Shut Up. Because I said it once, plainly, at a table, and she went quiet and started editing what she tells me - and a woman who edits what she tells you eventually stops telling you.

So now I hold the bag. I say the outfit is fire, because it is. I answer the screenshots with something soft and useless. I uber her home along Waiyaki way at midnight while she explains, again, that he has been going through a lot.

Stage Seven: The Thing I Actually Know. She will get there. They always get there, and never one day earlier than they were going to.

I just hope she will get there before the Knotless braids grow out.