This House is not my Home!

One evening many many years ago, when I was young, socially active and not forgetting single, while in the office at the end of a long hard day one of my workmates declared he was exhausted and announced that he was going “home”.

Two or more hours after my workmate declaration I too left the office and since I was still single there was no need for me to rush to the “house” so I made the usual detour to get something to eat as well as something to wash it down.

Okay, no need to disagree, the truth was I literally wanted to flush down the ka-quarter, for the uninitiated that is a quarter kilogram piece of beef or goat meat that is either pan-fried or roasted and comes accompanied with a few potatoes, two onions (this varies with the season) and a diced or shredded tomato.

As I walked into the “joint” whom do I see sitting at the bar massaging a beer bottle as he carefully tried to peel off the label, my workmate who had left two hours earlier on his way “home”.?Based on the unwritten code, I passed by the butchers ordered a ka-kilo, that is two ka-quarters, and then made my way to the bar and sat down next to my workmate.

A few hours later I drugged myself out as all the energy I had left just enough to get myself into bed once I got to the house, showering was definitely out of the question and fortunately, I had left the bed unmade when I left in the morning which would make the process of falling into bed much easier.?

So, I said goodbye to my workmate, who had left the office two hours before me after declaring he was going “home”, as he seemed to already be home and I did not want to overstay my welcome so I left for the house.?If I do not already have you confused then I must be losing my edge, tell me if I have.

My workmate, who had left the office two hours before me on his way “home”, was a happily married man, I assumed, as he never flirted with anyone (PC means I cannot specify gender) whether at the office or at the watering hole, what my British ilk would call pub.

Our workmate had recently hosted us at “their home” for a “house warming” party as they had finally gotten the house to a state of completion for which friends and colleagues could be invited over without a need to wear hard huts.

It was a lovely event and we did enjoy ourselves as we listened to the couple share their escapades and the skills and knowledge they had acquired which they would unfortunately never put to work.

The events I have just narrated above flooded back into my conscious mind recently after watching a very emotional advertisement by one of our local banks about how they partnered with their clients to achieve their dreams of owning a “home”.

Let me digress a little, in my early working years, as was and I believe still is the norm, I need to acquire a few more post qualifications certificates if was to move up the ranks and earn more money but due to my active social life, I had failed the unit on business communication.?

Since I needed to re-sit the particular unit before I could proceed meant that I would spend an entire six months doing a single unit, so I, in addition, enrolled for a class in English grammar just to keep busy, I thought I should be proficient in since I spoke English.

That English class taught me about what words really meant with the lecturer at times going off into the origins of the words which in most cases were from other languages such as French or Latin.?It was shocking how I was clueless of the true meanings of so many words which I had used umpteen times, wrongly.

To randomly pick a sample of those words would be “home” and “house”, which, based on their real meanings meant that when my workmate said he was going home but yet two hours later I found him at the pub meant that he had not lied about where he was going immediately he left the office.

A home: Somewhere you feel comfortable and feel like you belong, it is your refuge from the world.

What was concerning was that he had recently spent millions building what his banker, SACCO, family and close friends referred to as his home.

Thus, the article title “this house is not my home” is intended to enable those of us who have mentally and emotionally moved away from our agrarian ancestral mindset to feel comfortable in the knowledge-based one where land is no longer deemed to be a factor of production and owning the roof over our heads will not make it home if it is not where our hearts are at.

I will leave you with the task of finding out the true meaning of a house and hopefully the exercise will help you to better differentiate the subtle differences.

To my workmate, the pub was home while to others it could be their cars which they get into, throw off the six-inch heels, slip on their “ngomas”, snap open their bra strap and then put on the music at full blast ss the then cruise off to the house.

The distinction also allows one to realise that you can move your home but you can’t really move your house unless you live on a trailer.?That realisation will also allow you to make more realistic decisions about where to live and appreciate the fact that for most of us land is not a factor of production thus not owning it is unlikely to have any negative impact on your ability to earn a living.

So, next time you are offered an opportunity to buy or build a home remember that that is nothing more than a marketing gimmick, similar to the one that refers to you as a member of the middle-class, (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/kenya-doesnt-have-middle-class-robert-yawe), intended to make you feel warm and fuzzy as you get into debt that you do not need.

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