THE LETTERS

By Brian Nzomo.

Receiving a letter from a girl was an inestimable affair back in high school. Boys would brag all the time about being gangsta, but whenever those bits of colorful, scented letters arrived, all their macho personalities would dessicate; and they would be giggling like standard six pupils when they saw the first drawing of the female reproductive system.

These letters mostly came in after an event happened. Games, symposiums, contests, seminars and even inter-school religious services. Most of the girls who sent back letters were those who had met with the boys, only once or twice. In some instances, parties have never met before and they were never certain they would ever meet. It became like a penpal thing. Others limited their letter exchange follies with their village/town mates. To save face. At least someone sent a letter to them.

I never received a letter. Neither did I send one. A fact that denigrated me to the losers’ cadre. Whenever I attended symposiums or contests, I would receive letters from the ‘loser girls’ in other schools who were messengers like me. The letters belonged to other mofos in the school. I was supposed to deliver them unopened.

But I am a very curious man. I regularly opened those letters and read them. Those I had been sent with, and those I had came back with. I would re-staple them again before handing them to their intended receivers. I laughed at those writings. How dull they were. How would anyone be fascinated by such superficial expressions of love? Ofcourse it wasn’t love, for none of us had the faintest idea of the feeling. Some were full of contractions like text messages, others in sheng, others were a complete hogwash of pompous English drawn from the dictionary. Zero of those I read were actually poetic at all. If girls were actually thrilled by frivolities as those I read, then they were equally inane.

Here I found a business opportunity. I accepted my fate. I would never receive letters, but what stopped me from ghostwriting them. Just give me the name of the girl, her descriptions(if you’ve met her before), the length you wished it to be written, the core message you wanted to relay and the language you wanted to be used. I would then sit down and pen something ostentatious for you. Ink that would thaw the heart of any maiden. I was exceptionally poetic at the time. A teenage deprived of love was lethal in tawdry expression. Sometimes, I would weave direct Shakespeare’s verses or Lord Byron’s poems in the English letters I wrote. Pure plagiarism. But who would know? The average high school student was unlikely to have touched any fictional writing. Except the setbooks. Sad, but advantageous for me. For when they read those letters, they crowned me master of ink. Poor them.

It was not free. As a form four, I barely had time to sit down to write stupid letters. My rates were set. Nothing less than 150 shillings. The cheaper the price, the cheaper the ink. So level up if you wanted unmatched effort from me. Desperate niggas would cough 500 shillings to have the best. What a pity if they never got anything sound from those relationships. But their loss of confidence in their own expression, was my profit.

I almost became rich overnight. Then my business began to flounder. Guys were not receiving letters anymore as in the past. What reason had they to write to the girls anymore? I was on the brink of collapse. That’s when my friend Leonard and I, restrategized.

We began writing faux letters. Random letters addressed to those we zeroed in as simple-minded boys who would fall for the treachery. The letters were written in impeccable language, sent by ‘secret admirers from Machakos girls’. We used fake initials to create an air of mystery. Have our victim ask himself: “Who is this secret admirer called L.M?” And they did. Mystery is so powerful. It lures you into the lair of our exploitation, because the human mind is dissatisfied with ‘not knowing fully’.

Within a month, our business was ascending once again. Letter-writing deals overwhelmed us. We were careful. We had to maintain that air of mystery, keep its sweetness lingering, never fading its lure. We wrote letters two-way. They were oblivious to the reality that the same people who wrote the letters for them, were the same ones who wrote back. It was a tedious scam we ran. But rewarding.

After KCSE, my year long scam was undiscovered. Till date, I am certain that our victims still imagine they had secret admirers in posh girl schools. These are the frail minds that succumb all the time to online catfish accounts. Sending fare to bikini-clad women with two photos, no mutual friends, no interaction…