Interview with Job

News reporter: First, you lost your job, your mother died, your wife fell sick, your children have been sent away from school, you’ve been adversely mentioned in the sugar scandal… Do you feel that God has abandoned you?

Job: Why would you think that?

News reporter: Yours was the story of the decade. The blue-eyed boy who rose from obscurity to the helm of the country’s security as minister.

Job: It was all God. (‘Ni God manze!’ – when later interviewed in another radio station that plies its broadcasts in Sheng.)

News reporter: Even the sugar scandal?

Job: Those are my political detractors. They just can’t fathom how the son of a nobody has risen to such great heights. You know, the police have been weaponised…

News reporter: But this is the life of Klowns we are talking about. Innocent Klowns being exposed to the dangers of mercury-laced sugar. If it was another country, you as the minister would have already resigned.

Job: Well, God has not told me to resign. And Satan comes in many forms…

News reporter: Are you now calling your fellow leaders Satan?

Job: Your words, not mine… etc., etc.

Before Job rehabilitated himself, namely through effective propaganda as he was a darling of the news reporters (his brown envelopes were always thick, plus he always pointed them towards juicy stories that were the country’s weekly scandals - many of them with a political angle - that helped sell newspapers), he had undergone numerous tribulations such that someone did a popular tune about him with the refrain that: ‘One man’s misfortunes is another man’s hit song’.

Kapata maradhi, kaishiwa na kazi
Hasidi kwa rafiki, ukoma kwa jamii
Ila kama Ayubu, sikukulaani Elohi
Kanipa hali-mali, baraka upili.

 

(I fell sick and lost my job
Now become enemy to friend, Leprosy to relations
But like Job, curse you Lord I did not
Health and wealth, you blessed me once, twice)

 

When I heard of the song, of the rise, the fall, then the rise of Job, our security minister, I immediately thought of our neighbour, Baba Timmy. Baba Timmy was all classy: silk ties and designer shirts, serious suits tailored to measure, black Oxfords spit-shined… when we grew up, us boys resolved to be him, a government man unlike our shabby jua kali parents who tempted with life. That is until Joe brought us severely distressing news.

Now, Joe had passed his primary education and gone to high school just slightly outside the city centre. Coming from the opposite end, he had to board a bus to the city centre, then take another to his high school, else trek on days his parents were short of money. That’s when he noticed the distressing news that he was about to share.

The distressing news: that as they neared the city centre, Baby Timmy would be deep in thought, wondering where to alight and begin his day. In short, he was no government man, rather, a sort of broker… wanted ID with no fuss when you didn’t have all the proper documents, a shortcut on matters taxes for your company that you hadn’t been paying, the reappearance of land files for a piece of land someone was threatening to dispossess you of, a spare parts for your car at a fifth of the dealer price… that sort of broker.

I thought long and hard about Job’s tribulations and about Baba Timmy. What would Job do? What would Baba Timmy do? Thing is, I was in a bit of quandary. Double blessings, said my friend Mash as he didn’t have a girlfriend. On my part, two girls were proclaiming that they had belly for me: Tina – short and sweet, and Njeri – yellow yellow, tall and beautiful every which way.

This is how these two opportunistic girls wanted to entrap me. The year was 2013, election time. I had become Baba Timmy, a broker of no mean repute. From a single mabati shack, I had moved into a two-bedroomed tiled affair in a classier section of the neighbourhood. Mitumba clothes had abandoned me as had adopted an oga posturing – brand new made-to-measure African print, but without looking too much of a preacher-man.

The belly, as Njeri later confessed, came about that week when all I rode in was a Lexus – big, white, prime. I was going to be a man important in this republic, hence why she caught belly for me… that night she spent at my place and I was all high, drunk-like… 12 straight highly-charged political meetings as I campaigned for the man who later represented us in parliament.

As it were, the leading presidential candidate, in the same party as my candidate, had appeared in our constituency that day, drumming up support for himself and for my candidate. As the ‘youth rep’ (self-styled), I had been given the opportunity to greet the mammoth crowd gathered, going on to do a fine, invigorating speech that had many applauding me for weeks afterwards ( a bitter fellow called it incitement).

Now to my predicament: campaigns were over, my man safely ensconced in the August House (our presidential candidate a cropper, the opposition making the finish line by only a few thousands votes), and me back to my mabati shack and riding on my legs as the Lexus (hired) had been withdrawn. The new locale had been merely for cosmetics purposes and doubled as his secretariat, painting the candidate as a man of means able to take care of ‘his people’ – campaign staff and the constituency at large. He was not picking my calls either.

A knock on the door. My heart gave a big thump. I breathed in and out a couple of times, steadying my voice and conjuring a couple of tall tales to pacify the landlord as regards my late payment of rent. On the door, Tina and Njeri… it was about to get ugly. Can we come in? More of an order than a request. Time moved slowly, I in a haze… Njeri was busy doing her bad cooking… beef, terere and ugali. Tina sat next to me on the narrow bed, stroking my head, all the while whispering and cajoling, “Poor you. And we thought we had struck gold.”