One particularly warm Friday night, I found myself at Cock and Barrel in Nairobi’s Westlands, carried there by the currents of the evening. I'd just wrapped up a masterclass on authorship at a nearby bookshop, my head still spinning with ideas, and needed a drink before the commute home.
The place hummed with energy, mostly a lively Indian crowd whose laughter and conversation wove into the bar's low rumble. My friend Ali and I claimed two seats at the counter, giving us prime real estate: raised stage dead ahead, bar at our backs, and the beautiful chaos of a Friday night unfolding in between.
On stage, what appeared to be a professional dance troupe, maybe a dozen or so dancers, moved through an energetic routine. The music pounded with relentless joy.
Ali leaned over and launched into the story of how they nearly amputated his foot, all because of a thorn he'd picked up in his village up north. It was a wild thorn story, the wildest I have heard.
"The doctor in Isiolo said they might have to amputate my foot," Ali recalled, eyes wide with the memory, "before some blood infection reached my heart and... well, exploded it." I shook my head, smiling. "That should've been your first clue he was a quack," I said. Ali had caught the next flight to Nairobi to save his leg. "At one point, I actually started picturing life with one leg," he admitted, "thinking at least I'd finally have a legitimate claim to those disabled parking spots."
By my second whisky, more dancers had spilled from the floor onto the stage, transforming it into something closer to a block party. People swiveled in their seats to take in the spectacle, all that energy and skill on display.
The dancers moved with impossible fluidity; I couldn't even track their waists, just a whirl of limbs and joy. Ali sighed theatrically. "Sometimes I practice hopping up the stairs on one leg, just to see what it would've been like."
"You must have excellent knees," I said, lifting my glass, and we both cracked up. Around us, the bar thrummed—music bleeding into stories bleeding into motion. Cock and Barrel had become more than a Friday pit stop. It was the full hang, as the older folks would say.
