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Gone are the days when every bachelor in Nairobi had the same story. The days when being one meant you left your parent’s house somewhere in Ruiru to leave with a second cousin who only has one mattress and his clothes. Your first item was a mattress and suit to be used for tarmacking. Your pocket money had to be well budgeted since it was not just to last your tarmacking season but also the month before your first salary.
Hunger pangs were part of the name and most of the older generation watch young people whine nowadays and shake their heads in shock.
For the girls it was a bit trickier. You were meant to stay home until prince charming came with wazees holding a rope whose end was tired round a goat or sheep. Alternatively she was to live with a trusted aunt and dabble as househelp while tarmacking. If she was ‘well to do’, she’d end up in a hostel probably in Ngara sharing a room with 4 other girls.
Today, a side hustle is enough to sort out rent, what with the internet and general economic growth. Nowadays, the young man has a bed sitter or two bed-roomed either in Kahawa, Umoja, Kawangware, Kangemi, Kabete, Rongai or the more popular Kinoo, Uthiru area. The further you move from town the cheaper the houses.
This applies to the first few years of work because the ultimate prize in the bachelor’s bucket list is to leave in an apartment in Kileleshwa, driving some guzzler and attending THE events-The Mingle, Rhino Charge, Safari Sevens, Blankets and Wine and maybe All that Jazz.
Group one lives on Noodles and Sossi with Mama Bryan’s Chapatis while group two lives on takeaway since Kileleshwa has few roadside vibandas and the point of living there anyway is to avoid that.
There is one common factor though, today’s bachelor guzzles alcohol just like the forefathers. Whether in Donholm or Lavington.