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On the 30^th of March 2020, amidst all the tension, commotion, and hullabaloo about Covid-19, I lay lazily on one end of a three-seat sofa. My legs are crossed aboard a wooden table, as my right arm hangs on the armrest. I look at an old, black, 14-inch Cathode Ray Tube TV in front of me. It has been three days, and I can’t help the boredom in this place. I need some noise, I thought. My seven-year-old brother storms the door in, “Aah… Willy! Ambia Barbara anipee laptop!”. As if someone just disrupted me from a very important thought, which is partly true, I whine cryingly, “Barbara, si ufanye chenye Georgy anasema… Sitaki kelele!”

You see, I acquired the TV set from a second-hand dealer three days ago and only realized it had no sound after I excitedly connected it to the power supply and did all the cabling right, and wrong, just to make sure. I was exhausted and pissed off at the same time from all the back-and-forth travels to the same dealer who had promised to send an electrician to repair it but to no avail. And so, in this aura of boredom, I was determined to make my quarantine period a little more exciting than it was.

I awoke from the pensiveness, “Ma, is there a way tunaeza tengeneza hii TV?”

“Niko na fifty bob,” she says. After a brief moment of silence, I figured I had an available Fuliza Mpesa of three hundred and fifty shillings. My sister jumps in, “Si tunaeza ita yule fundi wa pale.” I had no idea who the electrician was, but any electrician who could repair the TV was good for me, so I quickly asked my sister if she could escort him to our place so he could look at it. Full of energy, she hops into action without a second to spare.

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Ten minutes later, my sister Barbara walks in, giggling all her front teeth out. Right on her tail is a weird-looking man in his thirties on my appraisal. His eyes were strawberry red, and I could make out a network of veins from three meters away. His garments were a wreck, an old, red, faded shirt. It didn’t look red anymore. Somewhere between white and pink, I would say. His trousers were rugged at the end, barely touching his ankles, perhaps afraid of the old wound he says has been there for a year. “Fell off my bike.” As soon as he opens his mouth, a stench of the illicit local booze sold out in hidden corners of our suburbs is felt. I feel odd about this guy. But then again, as I said, any electrician who could repair the TV was good for me. He squeezes himself between things to get to me, the two sofas just at the door, my little brother walking out, and the wooden table just in front of me. Then drops with a thud beside me, like a sack of maize off the shoulder of a laborer in the godowns. “So, what’s up?” he asks, unknowing of the disgust he fills me with from his stench. I want to cringe, but I hold my breath enough to keep my cool, “The TV has no sound.”

“I brought my equipment with me. Bring it here; I want to do a diagnosis.”

My mam at one end of the room chuckles as she separates the chaff from the green grams that is our lunch.

He removes a screwdriver from his pocket and unscrews open the four corners of the TV. One of them falls and rolls down under the seat we’re on. He doesn’t bother checking. Taking his time, he looks around, over and under every tiny bit of the now scrap-like electronic with such keenness, “It’s the AC”

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“So, what does that mean?”

“We need a new AC. A new one is around 300Ksh, plus my bike ride fare to and from the electronics shop and my service fee; I’ll charge you 600Ksh.”

“I really do not have that kind of money; I have 350Ksh with me.”

“I don’t do that kind of job, 600Ksh and that’s it.”

We negotiate for a while till we’re at a stalemate at 500Ksh. Then he starts assembling the TV back. “I’m a very respected electrician around here. Ask around. My work is perfect. Done it for ten years. I’m not like these other guys who con you and leave your appliance worse than before.”

At this time, my heart is already reluctant about the guy, so I hardly make any effort to hold him back when he acts to suggest he’ll be leaving. But then, he doesn’t. Instead, he continues talking. Mumbling and jumbling about how he’s a man of God, how he started his job as an apprentice of another respected electrician in Nairobi, how he owns his own motorcycle, how he obtained the motorcycle from a church fundraiser, how he’s proud he has got a wife and three kids, how he…

My mind drifted off a while back, and now, I just have an itchy feeling about getting rid of the guy. Before I utter a syllable about that, I bounce back to the reality at hand, “350Ksh then,” he says

“Oh… Okay!”

I hastily gather the money, Ksh200 in cash and a Ksh150 Mpesa transaction, to his phone number. In no time, we are strolling, cutting in between low-income Swahili rentals to his motorbike. He continues priding himself for his achievements, and truthfully speaking, his appearance doesn’t match his words. But anyway, I wasn’t paying attention to all his talking. I just wanted the TV fixed.

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We reach where he placed his motorcycle; he kicks one-two times, and the engine roars. I jump on the back, and we’re headed to where I thought was the electronics shop. My heart races at the flying speed at which we’re going. I peep beside his shoulder, and the speedometer reads 110km/h. He makes tight corners at an accelerating speed; I seriously thought we would crash at a mere hit of a grain of sand. I look to the sides, and panoramic scenes of people and houses flashing behind us don’t make me feel any better. I don’t think he cares. His alcohol breath hits me so directly on his back, and his shirt flaps against the wrath of the wind we’re up against. I’m uncomfortable, but I want the TV fixed.

At one point, he stops beside a main road and asks me to wait a while as he runs errands at some hidden corner. He walks into the street and vanishes in between the buildings. At the back of my head, I have already planned how to make away with his motorcycle if he tries anything fishy. I wait impatiently, five minutes go by without seeing him, and it seems like forever. It’s already 1 o’clock, and the scorching sun of the coastal city hits my black skin with no mercy; it drowns my shirt into my sweat. My half-opened eyes gaze around suspiciously as I try to prevent my pupils from the intense sun.

After about twenty minutes, he appears, a brown envelope wrapped under his armpits with a sweat patch. I could make out a shape of a bottle in the envelope. He hops onto the motorcycle, and I don’t need a word from him to tell me what to do. I jump onto the back, and we continue our life-threatening race against nothing. We take an off-road to a slummy neighborhood. And even though the road is bumpy, with more people walking along, he doesn’t seem to notice this.

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He speeds past everything on his way, leaning from left to right as he drifts along sharp corners, missing some wrinkled, elderly-looking, white-hairy man by a whisker. Then even speeds further when he comes across a straight path, but only does so for a couple of seconds before inertia hits my nose on his back and causes a rush that runs into my head.

We get off the motorcycle and head towards a Swahili rental. He walks into the first room on the left and I prefer to stay outside, but he insists, “Err… Come in. Feel at home.” I walk in reluctantly. It’s a double room, the living room we’re in, and a bedroom. On the table is an open Bible with rugged pages, but I can tell it holds much value to the woman sitting opposite me.

“My wife, heh…” he mutters.

A small boy walks in, dripping water with a towel on his waist, “and this is my son,” he continues, rubbing his hands onto his head. The room is untidy, with a wrecked phone here, a TV motherboard there, and other electronic parts everywhere. I had to look twice before sitting on the couch I had been directed to.

The woman opposite me doesn’t seem happy at all. Even though, by the look of things, you could tell life hasn’t been easy. She should at least smile now that her husband is home; she doesn’t. He holds the Bible from the table dearly and opens several pages. She seems to be in a Zen-like state of meditation but glances at me from time to time.

The electrician I came with seems to be looking for something with so much energy but with no success. He pulls out a cupboard drawer, takes out wires and other phones, gets them back in, and pushes the drawer back. Afterward, he walks into the bedroom; I’m guessing, to continue looking for “the thing.” His wife turns back to me and gives me a serious look, “Be careful,” she says, “You see how drunk he is? He’s going to get away with your money.”

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Surely, this woman must have had enough of the man to cough out such words. But who am I to refute his better half?; the one person in this room who knows him better than I do, the only person. Nonetheless, I was surprised by her sentiments and gave a blank stare, my eyebrows almost touching my hairline and my lips tucked into my mouth not to spill out anything regrettable. I thought, Let me see how this drama ends.

After 20 minutes of searching for “this thing” without success, the man finally gave in. He grabbed my hand to signal a move-out, and I gave in to his non-verbal cue, stepping out to the afternoon sunshine. As much as I would love for you to imagine how its rays gently kissed my melanin into a glistening glow as if I had applied baby oil; that was not the case. It was scorching hot. I could have sworn the sun grew a little bigger today, adding to my miseries.

The man whistled at me onto his motorcycle, and I obliged like a loyal pet dog. I jumped onto the back of his bike and held his waist tightly since his driving seemed like a life-or-death affair. If you observed us closely, you would think we were about to shoot one of those romantic love scenes where the man rides his girl into the sunset while she hugs him from the back. Nonetheless, I was willing to live through this comedy-drama until the TV got fixed.

After negotiating through the ins and outs of this neighborhood, we halted at a small electronics shop. “Shuka!” he ordered. When he went to talk to the electrician, I wondered about my obsession with getting the TV fixed. I traced the journey to this moment and concluded that the man was untrustworthy. Some commotion woke me up from my thoughts, “Aisee! Ntakucharaza usahau ulikotoka. Capacitor yangu iwapi? Shoga sana wewe!” “This man attracts trouble wherever he goes,” I thought, “or probably he just follows it.” If the latter is true, I have been roaming around with a moron. But how stupid can an antelope be that it sees a lion and runs to chase it?

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Apparently, this man is synonymous with stealing from electricians. He hangs around the electronics shop, pretends to be helping, and even cracks you up a little bit; all the while, he collects small electronic parts like capacitors, resistors, and fuses for his own work. And now, he had dragged me right into the lion’s den with him.

“Achana na mimi Athumani!” he shouts, “Uliona nikichukua?”

As this pandemonium continued, a stream of dead-beat men appeared one at a time. On my left, one emerged from the low-roofed structure made of rusty iron sheets and nylon paper, while on my right, another came out of a shanty house made of mud and stone. One was carrying a panga, and the other just carried a mean face that said, “I hope you know who you’re messing with.” I forgot I lived in a drug-ridden slum where anything goes; so I realized I had to go too. Lest I return home with an AC and a broken leg. I stealthily disappeared into the gathering crowd and walked home. On my way home, I interrogated this whole ordeal. “Isn’t an AC an Air Conditioner? Why would this man need an air conditioner to repair the TV? Is he even a real electrician?” I shook my head in amusement and continued on my way. A few minutes later, he called, “Uko wapi? Nimepata AC.” I hung up and continued my way. Moments after the call, he flew passed me with his motorcycle and stopped after seeing me, “Panda twende nikumalizie kazi.” I shook my head in disagreement and continued my way.

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It was on the 31^st of March 2020. I lay upright on the end of a three-seat sofa, my hands aboard the keyboard of my black Lenovo laptop. I decide to write an anecdote about yesterday’s events. On the screen are a couple of jotted lines I intend for my opening sentences. My seven-year-old brother storms the door in, “Willy…!”

“Uh huh!” my sister cuts in.

“Barbara,” I reiterate. There is a peaceful ambiance for a minute or two before I submit, “Naandika ile story ya jana, ni iite aje?” My sister laughs hysterically and jokingly suggests, “THE DRUNK ELECTRICIAN.”

“COVIDMAN!” my little brother shouts. I can feel a mild grin on my face as I stare into open space.

C-O-V-I-D-M-A-N

“Covidman it is.”