We’re losing recipes

I spent most of my January back home. It was amazing. It was just me and my mum for days.

I’d just take walks all the time. Sometimes twice a day. Decided to go check out where we used to play ball back in the day.

There’s an apartment complex there. I was genuinely heartbroken. During Covid I spent 6 out of 7 days in that field. Every single day without fail, I was in that field. Whether I was playing or not. Everyone knew if you wanted to find me, I’d be there.

They gentrified my childhood.

I linked one of my yungins to ask where they play nowadays. They don’t. They just ride bikes nowadays and shit. Yes, we used to do that as well, but only like 4 of us had bikes. There was like 15 of us. I saw my old bike with one of them recently too.

One of the yungins, she just finished high school, she told she got caught with a blunt in her room. I couldn’t believe it. What do you mean you got caught? Back in our day, no one ever got caught. Why you keeping weed in your mum’s house in the first place? You smoke at the plug’s house, or the field, or you don’t smoke at all. Plus she spends an unhealthy amount of time in our little town. I go there, I always find her. Go home. We never used to be in town. We were probably in one of our homes together or in the field, church, or a corner somewhere. Never in town.

Nyeri has become so gentrified it scares me. Farmland is being converted to apartments. People are being priced out of their land. And it’s happening quick. Crime rate’s gonna increase, especially where I’m from where we barely have a police presence. Most of our neighbors have started installing CCTV cameras and getting guard dogs. We never had to worry about shit like that.

We all knew each other. Even if we were in different schools, different churches. We knew each other. Most weekends we’d be outside fuckin around. Nowadays these kid’s barely leave the house. They don’t even have unnecessary beefs like we used to. Fuck ‘em.

We are so fucked.

(I refer to them as my yungins because they all call me Uncle Ted, even though we aren’t related. I just be looking out for them)

(Writing this on my phone high af on a rooftop. First post written on my phone)