The recession of my anatomy

By PETER GAITHO
Published May 23, 2010

“Your gum line seems to be receding,” my dentist passed the verdict, after examining the x-ray pictures of my teeth, and prodding my mouth with some sharp steel object, and a tiny mirror. “At this rate, you might develop some cavities, especially in your molars.”

“It is not only my gum receding,” I almost told him, but I did not. I know my gum has been receding for a while now, and I think I know why. What with the many years of chewing on hard food such as githeri, very tough sugar cane, kienyeji chicken, and goat ribs, long after the last morsel of flesh had gone? With all that punishment, what gum will not recede?

“Everything in me is receding at an alarming level,” I mumbled to myself. Take my waist, for example. Ever since I crossed to this side of 30, I have noticed that my waist has been receding, and in its place, has appeared something that resembles a tire wheel. At least I only have one tire around my waist; I know my age mates who have two, or three tires around their waists. Even as the waist is receding, so does my butts. It seems that what I gain in front, I lose in the back. So help me God.

My hairline is also suffering a recession. I started noticing this a decade ago. I wondered whether I was developing a wider face, but on closer look, I discovered that I was losing some hair. The evidence was in the pillow, and the hair brush every morning.

Even as I lost some hair on top of the head, the same hair would appear, in some other place within my anatomy. That is why today, I boast of some strands, inside the nose and ears. No wonder, my son calls me porcupine ears. I am yet to know why I lose hair on my head, and gain the same in those undesirable places.

My neck is another culprit. I very well remember my twenties, when I had a size 16 neck, and it was noticeable, especially from the back. But now, my son tells me that my back, and head, are not joined by a neck, but some flaps of flesh we call ngata, where I come from.

My appetite for rioting has also receded. Some years back, I used to venture out a lot. Call me itchy feet, but that is what I was. I filled the tank of my car, and drove all over, doing this and that. By the time the tank was empty, I would have painted various towns red. But now, all that has receded, and all that is left, is sit back and enjoy a Celtics basketball game, while imbibing from an orange juice glass. The bitterest drink I now take is ginger ale, while dancing to Kirk Franklin’s ‘Do you want a revolution?’

But the single most loser in the race of recession, is my wallet. I have tried all known methods to increase the size of my wallet, to no avail. Every time I come across what I think is the abracadabra, of crossing the valley of poverty, viola! It vanishes, and with it, some brain cells. I have scratched my head, built castles in the air, but it all are a chase of the wind. It is like a mirage.

And then I read in the newspapers,about a mhindi of my age,now a billionaire in Nairobi, after establishing a software company, only 10 years ago. I rethink my strategies of wealth creation, and imagine that maybe, I have been in the wrong career all along.

The worst thing is that, the more I earn, the less I get. It goes like this; I receive my pay stub today, pay all my bills, send some dollars to build Jamhuri, and by the next day, I am as broke as I was before payday. I have a mind that the Internal Revenue Service, is my enemy number one. Otherwise why do they get from me, almost 35 percent of my hard earned cash? But then again, I look at the smooth roads, and all those good services from Uncle Sam, and I keep quiet.

But when I compare myself to the universe, I recognize I might be lucky, to be earning more than a dollar a day. I read somewhere that, while I lament the recession within my system, the global eco system has suffered the worst recession. And I am not talking economics. The forest cover has been receding at an alarming rate. That is why my furniture is now made of compacted wheat, and rice husks from Thailand, and Indonesia.

The polar ice cover is also receding so quickly, that by the time my son is my age, Antarctica will be populated with humanity, and the Arctic Circle, a summer vacation destination. The last time I checked, Mt. Kilimanjaro had lost the ice cap. Talk of recession.

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