David Doesn’t Clap Anymore—And Here’s Why It Matters

I met David last year in Kisumu, just outside his Agro-Vet shop. I had accompanied my friend who was looking for antibiotics for her mum’s goat, but what I found was a story thicker than the red soil that clung stubbornly to his worn gumboots.

David used to clap the loudest.

Weddings? He was the one who started the slow clap that turned into a roar. Office parties? He’d volunteer to MC, even though his English sometimes took detours through shags. Baby showers? He once brought a cake shaped like a diaper. No one asked for it, but he said it was “symbolic.”

He believed in appearances. Life, he figured, was about keeping up—if not with the Joneses, at least with the Onyanchas. He ironed his socks. Wore cologne that sounded French but was probably manufactured in Industrial Area. His smile was white and ready for Instagram. His captions were always deep—stolen from Pinterest, but deep nonetheless.

"Energy doesn’t lie."
"Vibrate higher."
"Catch flights, not feelings."

Sometimes he’d scribble quotes on napkins at Java—not for clout, but to remember how words could feel like music.

He posted pictures of sushi he barely understood and wore turtlenecks that made him sweat. But looking good was everything.

Until it wasn’t.

David’s razzmatazz era came to a crashing halt in a hospital waiting room. The kind that smells like Dettol and borrowed time. His father was sick with a stroke. Sudden. Unscripted. No filters.

He flew home the same day. First time in years. He booked the flight without tweeting, “Kisumu, let’s gooo!”

At the hospital, he found his old man lying there, quiet, tubes where his words used to be. This was the same man who once chased off thieves with a panga in his underwear. Now, he couldn’t lift a spoon.

That night, unable to sleep, David’s mind replayed their last conversation—a night months earlier when his dad, with a wry grin, said:

“David, son, don’t forget the soil you came from. No matter how high you fly, your roots pull you back. You can’t clap with one hand.”

David had laughed it off then, but now those words cut deeper than any panga.

After the funeral, which was small, muddy, and brutally honest, David stayed. Not long at first. Just long enough to handle “family stuff.” But days turned into weeks, and the city began to feel like a distant dream. He stopped checking his WhatsApp groups. Someone texted, “Bro, we miss your vibes.” He read it and said nothing.

One afternoon, he even tried to go back to Nairobi. Wore a fresh shirt. Played his old playlist. Sat in a café pretending to be the man he once was.
But the mirror didn’t lie. The razzmatazz felt like a costume he’d outgrown.
He left before the bill came. Nairobi felt too loud for someone who now listened to soil.

So he bought a one-way ticket back home, feeling lighter with every mile.

David opened an agrovet with the little savings he had. Called it Baba’s Farm Corner. The signboard was crooked. The font was Comic Sans. His old self would’ve gagged.

But the chickens didn’t care.

He woke up at sunrise. Fed them. Talked to them. Sometimes even apologized for the old version of himself.

“Sorry for who I used to be. I wore sunglasses indoors, for crying out loud.”

The days were long but clean. Honest. At 10 a.m., he’d drink chai from a tin mug, the same one his father used to sip from while telling stories under the mango tree. The handle was missing. He never replaced it.

A customer once asked, “Why not just buy a new one?”
David smiled.

“Because this one remembers.”

One evening, his old Nairobi friends came visiting. They brought whisky, Bluetooth speakers, and that exhausting need to be seen.

“Bro, you’re glowing! Is this your village vibe? Eh!”

He laughed politely, offered them tea.

When they asked why he didn’t come to town anymore, he looked at his farm. At his muddy gumboots. At the clouds moving slowly over the sugarcane fields.

Then he said,

“I just got tired of clapping.”

They laughed. Thought it was a joke.
It wasn’t.

David doesn’t clap anymore.

He nods. He listens. He remembers. He plants things. He fixes what breaks, including himself.

And sometimes, in the early hours of morning, he writes poems on brown paper bags. Poems about old shoes, silent fathers, and the sweetness of being unknown.

One evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the sky burnt orange, I watched him fold a poem into a paper plane and toss it into the wind. The paper caught a gentle breeze and drifted away, like a secret set free.

The poem, titled “The Honest Night,” read:

Let others shine with borrowed light,
I’ll walk my path in the honest night.
Keep your smoke and fancy jazz,
I’m done with noise.
No razzmatazz.

I left him there, outside his agrovet shop, gumboots caked in red soil, eyes softer than silence.
David doesn’t clap anymore.
But somehow, the world around him finally listens.