Blankets and Wine

They come bearing baskets containing wine and cheese. They come rom South b, Lavington, Langata, Spring Valley, Donholm, Imara Daima, Karen, South C, Loresho. And yes, they come from the greatest incubator of the middle-class, Kileleshwa.


They come in fancy cars with gleaming rims and shimmering sound systems. They come in their linens, shorts, flowing dresses and huge sunglasses (if everyone at this do all looked up at a go, and an aerial picture was taken, it would look like an alien convention, what with the saucer-sized sunglasses). They all have great teeth, and they show them when they smile. And everyone at B&W smiles.


But B&W is ideally a class convention where all the middle class go to make a statement about their affluence, where they go to seek validation in numbers. And there is no greater – or more socially significant group – like the middle- class because they are loud. Loud in their dressing, loud in the cars that they drive, loud in the women they date and the clubs they go to. They are even loud in their love making because they like to make a statement. A middle-class woman can sit at Arte café, silently having her latte, head buried in her book and I will feel her loudness across the room. There are no subtleties in the middle-class, life has to be eaten with a smack!


And at Blankets and Wine – perhaps the most successful middle-class shindig of all time – they come bearing props; they come abiding hats and P Diddy like walking sticks. Some brazen ones push the boat out and come with their three month old babies, who hang – like bovine steak – from their fancy 12thousand bob baby carriers. but those without pretty babies to parade come with shampooed poodles that smell better than my neighbour Tony. Lately there has been the guys who lug along with their iPads because there are emails that just can’t wait!






And so they come and sip their drinks in plastic cups and sway to the afro fusionists up on stage because, and wait or it…they feel aro fusion.


Smoke and mirrors; that’s what Nairobi is. If you hate it so much, move to Makueni. Or write about it.


                           

                          Anonymous Source