Woke up late because Safaricom WiFi decided to nap until noon, again. Finally got online around 2pm, made chai, and jumped into Warzone with the squad in Nairobi and one guy from Kisumu who always lags when it rains. We lost 3 matches back to back and blamed ping, obviously. Took a break to go buy bread and blackout hit the estate for an hour, so I just sat on the balcony scrolling TikTok and watching kids play football in the dust. Power came back, dinner was ugali and sukuma, then back to the desk by 9pm. Grinded ranked till 1am, got to Gold 2, and now my eyes are burning but I’m too hyped to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and do it all again — work applications in the morning, games at night. This is life.
The afternoon is always the worst part. That’s when bundles are expensive and everyone in the cyber café is downloading something, so my 20GB feels like 2GB. I usually hotspot from my phone and pray the bill doesn’t kill me at the end of the month. My cousin keeps telling me “acha michezo, tafuta kazi” but he doesn’t get it. Gaming is the only place I feel like I’m actually good at something. When I clutch a 1v4 or hit a crazy snipe, the boys in the Discord go crazy and for 10 seconds I forget about rent, job hunting, and NEPA-style blackouts.
By midnight the estate goes quiet. Just the hum of my laptop fan and boda bodas far away. I’ll queue one last match even though I know I should sleep. Sometimes a random from South Africa or the UK joins and asks “bro you’re from Kenya? Respect the ping.” I laugh and say “we make it work.” I close the game, check my bank balance, and set 3 alarms for tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I’ll land that remote IT interview. Maybe tomorrow the WiFi won’t die mid-match. But tonight, I’m just a Kenyan kid with a controller, big dreams, and 6% battery.