Dear Rockers

This past weekend has played out a little bit like a scene in a Stephen King Novel.


See, a bunch of us went and camped on the grabbed hills of Ngong. We knew there were buffaloes and other wild ones but decided they wouldn’t attack us if we minded our own business. A stupid thing to do I know but, what is life without one or two of those. Some of us were dumb enough to carry electrics because they thought it would make them look ‘cool’. I had my acoustic with me and had quite the lineup of Mraz and Bublé songs.


Among us was one Buddha, nicknamed thus because of his peaceful nature and the lotus position he assumed whenever and wherever he was. Though not a musician, Buddha learned how to play the guitar against all odds. When he first started, he had no guitar, couldn’t read music and seemed to know nothing but how to beat drums – the traditional kind – with no particular rhythm. Before he knew it, and after only a few months of hanging around guitar wielding self-proclaimed superstars, he found that he could learn any song by ear.


Having been present during those first days when this miracle began can only be compared to watching a gymnast bloom. In this case, the gymnastics was in his fingers. Though not a rocker, Buddha can do Steven Tyler just fine. He not only looks like a black version of him with locks instead of blonde curly tresses, but sometimes I wonder if he doesn’t just sit for hours, studying and imitating his speech.


So there we were on a Saturday morning at 3am, sitting round a bonfire, intoxicated only by the freshness of the mountain air, and listening to Buddha sing “Back in The Saddle” while simultaneously pulling those impossible Jagger/Tyler facial expressions. He was just about to summarize and hand over the mantle to me when twigs all around us began to crackle.


Buffaloes don’t roam at night I told myself, lions were last seen here in the 80s. But then again, murderers seem to favour these woods as a dumping site. Immediately ‘Jaine’s got a gun’ started playing in my head and I wished so badly that I was Jaine. Of course in every horror story, there’s always that idiot who decides he has to go find out what ‘that’ was. In our case, there were five; Steve, Jay, his brother Jared, Omosh and Kama.


They disappeared into the darkness, guitars in hand in case they needed weapons. Against what, I wondered, fireflies? 50 seconds in and there was a horrible screaming sound coming from each of their directions, triggering an equally terrifying chorus scream from those of us left round the bonfire. Everyone grabbed a flaming log from it, ready to burn and thump anything that came their way. All I could think was, we’re all going to be decapitated. Before I could snatch a torch of my own, I heard what sounded like feedback, then what I knew to be the beginning of a Black Sabbath song.


Then it all began to make sense. The electrics, their insistence on parking in a semi-circle, the amplifiers in the boots of their cars; they’d planned to scare us all along. Expected of a band called Shadow Scratchers. As soon as they turned on their headlights, everyone relaxed and even attempted to enjoy their very grungy version of ‘Into the void’.


I never did get to play and fortunately, only figurative aural decapitation occurred. They were terrible.