One of the perks of being married is having someone contractually obliged to endure your rants and raves about any subject under the sun.
This particular benefit may not be spelt out in the marriage vows, which usually include phrases such as “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part”. Yet, trust me, it is certainly implied.
Of course, one must accept that one’s partner may be “listening without hearing”. In other words, they may be physically registering the sounds issuing from your mouth, but not actually processing or absorbing the meaning of the words.
That, too, is an additional bonus of marriage, particularly once you have been together for a while and the initial novelty has worn thin. The other person can simply carry out the passive reception of sound without the bother of giving your monologue their full attention.
When, for whatever reason, you are no longer married, you will find yourself forced to keep your bluster to yourself. This is because no one else is under any obligation to listen to you rambling on and on.
Of course, if, like me, you happen to be a newspaper columnist, you will still have an outlet for your diatribes.
In short, dear reader, what I am trying to tell you is that several things have been irritating me of late, and I should like to unburden myself. I can only hope you will grant me the kindness of actively engaging.
What has been getting on my wick this week is the two-faced attitude people display towards cleanliness in our towns and cities. On the one hand, they lambast the municipal authorities for failing to keep our urban centres spotless, while on the other, they fling banana skins out of their car windows without the slightest compunction.
I was taking my constitutional, as it was once called, in other words, out for a brisk walk in the fresh air for the sake of health, when I saw a motorist casually hurl a banana skin out of the window as they drove past.
Further along the same stretch, a fellow pedestrian drained the last drops from his plastic bottle and promptly tossed it onto the road before carrying on as though nothing had happened.
Now, while Malindi, the county capital, does hold a well-regarded monthly clean-up exercise to promote environmental conservation, I must confess that I have not seen any litter bins in the town. This is despite the fact that as long ago as November 2019, a Malindi Manager’s Solid Waste Management meeting recommended that bins be installed throughout the town.
Even so, the absence of bins is hardly an excuse to litter “anyhowly”, as we say in Kenya. Surely it cannot be such an immense inconvenience to carry an empty plastic bottle until you reach home, or at least until you find a suitable place to dispose of it properly.
Similarly, would it be too much to ask of motorists, whether private or public, to keep a small paper bag or similar receptacle in the vehicle for rubbish, which could then be deposited in a bin at journey’s end?
That said, the other day, as I walked past the Muslim Cemetery on Lamu Road, I came across a particularly bizarre sight: several empty packets of a well-known brand of sports bra had been dumped just outside the cemetery walls. I am still trying to fathom whether these packets simply fell off the back of a lorry or whether there is some deeper mystery behind them.
Meanwhile, I was heartened to discover that, in addition to the Progressive Welfare Association of Malindi (PWAM) conducting its monthly clean-up of the areas around Malindi International Airport, other groups are devising plans to tackle different parts of the town, including the beaches.
Malindi boasts some of the most beautiful and expansive beaches along the Kenyan coast, where people love to while away their time strolling and relaxing. Yet it appears that many of these very visitors think nothing of dropping their rubbish directly onto the sand.
Hopefully, emerging initiatives such as the Buntwani Beach Youth Group’s proposed beach cleaning and conservation project will succeed in tackling the problem. For now, I suppose we shall simply have to wait and see.
