Dear Diary,
by: Guto Mogere
- Whatever might be said of life in the city, and there is much to be said, it would be impossible to deny that it is full of it, full of life, that is, and that it is never dull. The city’s heart beat is incessant; bright lights and glamour, skyscrapers, roundabouts and overpasses, the hustle, the bustle, the thieves and conmen, the infants, good lord – they are everywhere, the sights, the sounds, the smells, all omnipresent, all non-stop, relentless. Love it or leave it. So long as you continue to inflate your lungs, expect no escape from any of it. That is the bargain. Reprieve is a luxury granted only to the dead.
- For respite, one has to leave the city. As you know, dear diary, I detest the tediousness of travel. If tedium is the price of travel, then the repose of the country is its reward. Besides, everything has its price. This is a relatively modest one, for the tedium of travel is often moderated by its charm, and nothing quite completes the education of a Kenyan gentleman like travel.
- Circumstances have so conspired to join the reason for my trip, crisp air, country side and culture, with the occasion for it, a complicated, convoluted Court case. This is just what the doctor ordered. My travel companions are Senior Counsel, who hates travel, indeed, who hates any form of motion, and his learned junior, who also hates travel because Senior Counsel hates it, and, evidently, he has not yet reached that stage in his development when one is permitted the freedom of one’s own thoughts, nor is he possessed of the basic infrastructure for the production of harmless ideas. As he often boasts, he is a man of action. In that, he is surely not mistaken. He does as he is told, and he is ruthlessly efficient in the way that he executes instructions. Together, they make a formidable team. Senior Counsel ruminates and cogitates, solves complex problems in the quiet and tranquil of his sagacious mind, then releases his final directions to the eager junior, who, like an ox receiving direction from the farmer, sets out to work with uncompromising energy. This formula has won many big battles and yielded unparalleled success. And, as with his fellow labourer the ox, the battle scene, once the job is done, is a heap of wonder, envy and manure.
- Why does Senior Counsel so loathe travel, one may ask? The answer is not clear. It has for some years been shrouded in obscurity. It has something to do with safari ants. The incident happened long ago. The only survivors, we are told, are a pair of shoes, which we know belong to him, and a pair of trousers, which do not, and of whom the owner is unknown. There are no independent eye witnesses courageous enough to come forward with better particulars; Senior Counsel himself is sworn to secrecy, and it is futile to hope on his reviving this evidently distasteful memory. That therefore, is the balance of the evidence. Reconstruction of a story on such sparse evidence is simply impossible, and so I choose to leave the matter in suspense.
- Upon arriving at our destination, we are received by our opponents in the case. One of the things I love about these cases in the country is the hospitality. Our hosts are our opponents. They receive us like dignitaries, and entertain us like kings. We promise that we will reciprocate. We never do. We arrived in the evening, and as usual, we began with pleasantries. As usual, it was awful. The Clerk was nominated to introduce them to us. I was nominated to introduce us to them. They told us about how much rain they have had lately. We told them how much dust we have had. Michelle Obama famously said that when they go low, we go high. Not today it would seem; when they go low, we go low too. They told us it has been very quiet in these parts. We told them there has been lots of traffic in ours. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It was on this low plane that the initial disappointments were exchanged.
- Then we were taken to dinner, and for a drink. The restaurant was a nice little place, not too far from the Court building in which our showdown tomorrow was to take place. Our host is an experienced litigator. He was to deal with Senior Counsel, and so they sat next to each other. His learned junior, like our learned junior, were also sat in corresponding fashion, as was the Clerk and I, whom I was now expected to face for the rest of the evening. It was a beautiful evening, and the weather was tranquil. All agreed that we should sit outside. As we took our seats, there were some chickens roaming around. One seemed to take too keen an interest in our junior, which obviously irritated him, and was now interrupting the flow of conversation. The owner of the restaurant noticed this and came promptly to the rescue. ‘Please do not mind Joyce’, he said, ‘she always behaves this way among new people.’ Joyce, the chicken, and our junior, were thus introduced to each other. ‘And that is Gerald,’ he continued, pointing to a cock, no doubt having detected in our junior, some sort of curiosity in poultry. Then the owner’s assistant came with a large bottle of something, the contents of which we knew not, but which it was obvious had been preserved for this occasion. As the glasses arrived, the assistant dropped bits of grain here and there, creating a path towards the back of the restaurant. Joyce the chicken soon followed, as did Gerald, the cock, and they both disappeared.
- Our host asked us to raise our glasses, and gave a beautiful toast to the health and long life of Senior Counsel, to the many cases that they have done together, and to the many others that they will continue to do. Then we drank. It was a powerful concoction, coarse, strong, lukewarm, rough, rich, delicious. But this was not the time to show weakness. And so we steadied our nerves. And we drank. Our host was also nervous in the company of Senior Counsel. This seemed to me understandable. Senior Counsel is as eminent as they come. Our host describes himself as a specialist in Cultural Law and Heritage. Senior Counsel had advised us not to address him as an expert in burial disputes, for although there is nothing ignoble about this, this is what he is best known for, but it is not what he wishes to be known for, and has been fighting to shed a reputation which has clung too long and too hard.
- As the drink settled, our host gained confidence. At first, the drink seemed to lubricate his thoughts. The conversation was exhilarating. It was filled with reminiscences of days gone by, of heroic battles won, of profound submissions made, of the place of poetry in law, of landmark cases, of anecdote upon anecdote. We talked about politics, the law, religion and even about jurisprudence. I was enchanted. Then this mysterious drink, which had settled in the system, quiet and unobtrusive, was now awakening itself. It began to dilate the vessels, to raise the temperature on the skin, and to loosen the restraints. We had not been told what the drink was, but it soon started to reveal its true self, and so did our host. His confidence grew. His interest in the thoughts of others shrank. This intoxicating substance, for all its wonder, was now demonstrating its vulnerability to the law of diminishing returns. We now discovered that our host had already given all he had to offer. What was left was nonsense.
- Soul mates, zebra, chicken stew, education, Israel and Palestine, cars, moisturizer, guitar, fishing, chess, weather, coffin design, gonorrhea, karate, fire-fighting, swimming. There was no topic on which our host did not feel himself capable, erudite and confident. He was motoring at full speed, and the brake was now not working. The redeeming hesitations from earlier on had been totally overcome. Ignorance was not allowed to come in the way of strong opinion. The conversation was now monopolized, and directionless. Then came the jokes. If nobody laughed this could mean one thing and one thing only; that the joke had not been heard. Therefore, it must be repeated.
- Yet that was not the worst. The conversation deteriorated further still. Our host began throwing thinly veiled insults in our direction. He said that life in the city saps the natural strength of body and mind; that city dwellers, accustomed to the corrupting comforts of modern life, have allowed their moral and physical properties to fall into desuetude, that they lack that vigour and vitality without which a society cannot prosper. In short, that they are soft, unfit, withdrawn from nature, and uprooted from culture. It was intolerable.
- Happily, dinner had arrived. There was roast chicken and boiled chicken. As it was served, Junior Counsel asked, as many city dwellers ask when dining in the country, if the food of which we are about to partake is grown here. Yes, it is indeed. The meal was delicious. Meanwhile, the drink continued to be imbibed. But by now Senior Counsel could not bear our host any more. At any rate, its steady absorption was causing heaviness in the head, which he could do nothing about, and heaviness in the bladder too, which he must relieve at once. He therefore excused himself and ducked behind the bushes. In any event, he was not going to ask for the facilities, lest this otherwise civil inquiry should be interpreted as yet another sign of the weakness from the city. In the darkness, he did not realize that the very bush that he had chosen was at that serendipitous moment occupied by our host. He let out a ferocious jet, which was followed by the loudest shriek. Explanations were useless. This was but another instance of the arrogance of the urban bourgeoisie, came the violent protest. Then someone offered an unhelpful remark about the story of the burning bush, which only made matters worse. Emotions were now running too high to accommodate any rational noises. Senior Counsel immediately assessed the situation as beyond salvage, and evacuated himself with all deliberate haste.
- Meanwhile, in the restaurant, the drama was not over. Junior Counsel’s head was also very heavy, and he was now becoming incoherent. I was not sure that he shall be in a proper state to argue the case tomorrow. What about the chicken? He asked. What about the chicken? They clarified. Did you rear that here as well? Yes, that too. In fact, the roast one is Joyce and the boiled one is Gerald. Junior Counsel was heartbroken. Little did he realize that the grain that had been offered to his two new friends, Joyce and Gerald, was a trick, and that the spirituous delights of the glass now pouring so freely down his throat, is in fact only a very minor alteration of the same trap, and that what happened to them in the kitchen was about to happen to him in the Courtroom.