STORY THREAD

My neighbor owns a powerful home-theatre. I do not own any kind of volume amplifier speakers. When she feels sufficiently philanthropic with her volume, she dictates the genre of music everyone is going to listen to.

She uses this to her advantage to exact her revenge, torture, and bully other tenants into submission of any kind.
On Friday, one of my neighbors had a birthday party. Marto. He invited only two of the tenants from our floor and some of his friends

and family but snobbed our home-theatre neighbor. I recently moved into this apartment. I don’t know if they had differences before I moved into this apartment.
The birthday party started at around 5 PM.

It was all fun, drinking, dancing, and singing to Marto’s music playing from his woofer until our home-theatre neighbor came back home from work.
From the balcony of Marto’s house, we could hear the music from her Subaru car music system.

Her car volume was louder than Marto’s home woofer. This is despite Marto playing the music at maximum volume. She is the only tenant who owns a car and she makes sure she announces her arrival and departure from the apartment with her music.

She switched off her car music and walked into her house. We thought switching off the car music would save us from her noise only to learn that even the click-clacks of her high heels as she walked on the corridor was louder than Marto’s woofer.

Marto's woofer had a frail volume range. It played like a rooster learning how to crow.
At around 7 PM, ladies at the party prepared to cut the cake in the sitting room. I heard them request the DJ to play Hermonize’s happy birthday song as they cut the cake.

Those who had been drinking from the balcony were summoned unceremoniously into the sitting to sing alongside Harmonize as Marto cut the cake. As soon as the song started playing, our philanthropic neighbor decided that we must use her music for the party.

And of all genres and types of music in the world, she decided to play the ombea adui yako song.
‘Ombea adui yako, aishi siku mingi,
Ili unapobarikiwa, ajionee kwa macho.
Hamna haja kabisa, afe kabla hajaona
Baraka ambazo Mungu, ameeka mbele zako.

As if to provoke us further, she came out of her house and sat on her balcony where we could see her. She had a bottle of wine with a fancy name and a tumbler. She was listening to music through her earphones. Evidently, she was not listening to the haunting,

depressing and melancholic music playing from her home-theatre but the one in her earphones. At that time, I could guess the song that she was playing; I don't give care.'
And so the cake was cut as we sang and listened to Ombea Adui Yako. The song dampened the party’s mood.

They stopped playing such kinds of music in disco matangas, I wondered why someone would play the song during someone else’s birthday party. She had created a playlist of slow and melancholic music to kill us with boredom, and she succeeded in doing so.

Slowly, people started leaving the party prematurely. As soon as the last person left, she switched off her music.
I don’t understand the origin of my neighbors’ beef. Whatever it was, I vowed to steer away from it. Well, until yesterday.

In the morning, I soaked my clothes in the bathroom to wash them later. I decided to catch a series for an hour or so because I thought it was too early and cold to do laundry. It was around 8:30 AM. In the middle of the episode, I heard a knock on my door.

It was the home-theatre neighbor. She was short and beautiful.
She smiled and introduced herself in a friendly manner. It was the first time that I was interacting with her. After the pleasantries, she made a request. Her clothes had outgrown her clothesline.

She requested to use my space to hang her clothes out after doing laundry. Politely, I told her that I had soaked mine in the bathroom to wash in thirty minutes.

Suddenly, her face became sullen.I assumed the pensive face on her was because she was figuring out where to hang her extra clothes. She craned her neck and keeked into my house as if to confirm if I was indeed preparing to do laundry. My movie was still playing in the background

She toddled back to her house without saying a word.
I went back to my series. Barely 10 minutes later,at the very best scene of the episode, my house almost exploded with loud music. She pulled the same antic on me as she had done to Marto.I was suddenly exasperated with anger.

For me, she played Lucky Dube’s Born to Suffer song’s chorus.
I stormed out of my house while enraged like a bull on heat. First, I walked to Marto’s house to seek reinforcement.
‘Men, we can’t live like squatters in a house that we pay the same amount of house-rent,’

I ranted to Marto. Marto was dull. I guessed it because he didn’t care, or he was nursing a crazy alcohol hangover like the rest of Nairobians on a Sunday morning. When I asked for reinforcement from Marto, he claimed that he wasn’t feeling well and had stopped complaining.

He had complained to the landlord with zero success.
I was not Marto, I convinced myself. I pranced to confront the home-theatre lady. I thought Marto was a sissy who caved into the lady’s continuous bullying cowardly. I knocked on her door intensely.

Barely 30 seconds later, I knocked again, louder; my second knock bordered a bang. One minute later, she had not opened the door. I decided to go gaga and bang on it like a burglar.
As I waited for her to open the door, I rehearsed what to tell her;

‘I know my tenant rights by my fingertips. We pay the same amount of rent. Play low volume music or make sure your noise does not invade my house’s space, or else I will involve NEEMA in this matter!’ I talked to myself in the same manner as I expected to engage with her.

Moments later, I saw her door curtain move. My loud bang must have scared her- I thought. I folded my forehead skin to assume a serious and infuriated face.
Unexpectedly, the person who appeared at the door was not the lady.

Instead, a burly man, tall and built like a high breed of basketball and rugby players appeared on the door shirtless and in shorts. His body and face were intimidating. He stared down at me daringly, searching for my already terrified and terrorized face. I looked down.

For a moment, I thought I was the EWOI AND THE GIANT we read in those primary school English coursebooks.
I lost the energy I had. The veins that had formed on my face disappeared as my blood froze. ‘Babe, who is it, and what do they want?’ The madam asked from the house.

‘Fucking reduce your volume or move to Runda or Karen into a home with your own compound!’ I muttered to myself under a labored breath.
‘What are you saying?’ The man asked while unconsciously flexing the blocks of the muscles on his body, maybe to caution me,

‘‘the music is loud, I can’t get you,’ he added and cocked his head forward.
I moved closer to him, beaten, and raised my voice to say, ‘I came to tell your madam that she can hang her clothes on my clothesline,’

I gestured towards my clothesline. ‘I have changed my mind. I will do my laundry tomorrow!’
‘Okay,’ the man replied and closed the door on my face with a loud bang.
Marto had been watching the proceedings from his door, I guess with a can of popcorn hidden behind his back.

I dragged my Salum Alaikum body back to my house soaked in shame and writhing with rage. At that time, Nadia Mukami’s song, Leo nikuwatesa, was playing in her home-theatre.
The moral lesson of this story is: It is perfectly normal to do laundry on a Monday, as I have done today

I have written two novels, crime-romance fictional books. If you fancy giving a budding Kenyan author a chance, kindly grab a copy. 0728962819 - My number.
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