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.”
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