It is a time like this that Sarah ng’inwa-Rũmbia, would kũraũkata rĩrĩa Maara a tere ĩthe (visit as early as the hour that Mr. Maara disposed of his dying father) and knock at my grandmother’s door. Without waiting for the door to open, she would continue with her mission. A 411. As she unwrapped the rũgoto containing her snuff, she would address Mwaa-Kamwĩtha, my grandmum.
“Mwaa-Kamwĩtha, ĩ nĩrũraca nĩkwa rwĩ rũkũthanĩre!” (Daughter of Kamwĩtha, don’t be deceived by the tiny coil. This cord is long!)
Yes. This spaghetti-like maze that Jubilee got itself into is long, winding and an intricate web of duplicity. Quite uncharacteristic of the government, this time it has moved with speed to shut down the betting firms. From fununu, to confirmation of rumour and then to action, ordinarily, this takes anywhere outside of one year for the cogs of bureaucracy to engage, leave alone start rotating. This time, by the time I googled fununu, betting giants had been felled-down with one wild swoosh. The closure was attributed to, “stopping the corrupting of the morals of our fragile youth.”
Very considerate. But was it?
Election fundraiser
It turns out that sometime in 2016 some tenderpreneurs, given a free hand to fundraise for 2017, decided they were not and were not going to be lords of poverty. So, they pulled a fast “Ananias and Sapphira” on the master. Some stashed the loot in plastic gunny bags and disappeared down some abandoned quarry. One was seen digging a huge fox hole, ‘foolishly’ throw in some manure still packed in plastic bags into it then plant a banana in the pit. This manure had a distinct mixture of de la rue and central bank smell to it. Yet another was espied heaving his protrusion of a beer belly and an equally bulky sack the size carried by wa-chupa-na-debe up an attic.
Later, after 2017 had come and gone, they, remembering the holy lit, said to the master; “Master, we knew that you are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So…..,” The master, not one quick to anger bid his time.
When the time to nyorosha was ripe he called them for a prayer breakfast. Then “after removing the lock” he paraphrased a motley of memory verses from his days in the seminary as he looked them down with bloodshot eyes.
“You snakes! You brood of vipers!” he ranted. “I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.”
He turned to one, “Ananias! You are Ananias! Wewe ni Sapphira kabisa!”. He sipped something in a water bottle, but he fooled no one. He continued, “How is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to The Party and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the tender? Did it belong to you before it was awarded? And after it was awarded, was the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to the party.”
Then some young men came from Karura on Kiambu road and took him, Ananias, away.
But the master was not done. If he was not going to have the loot, no one was going to. First, he thought of raiding each and every possible house and ploughing any field and digging up every quarry that could hide the cash. This idea was abandoned. The places were just too many and the owners far too powerful. Then he thought of abolishing the currency. He abandoned it too. It was a tort.
Then, one morning as he poured himself a-tot-for-the-lock, he had a breakthrough. He made a call to a seminarian.
Suddenly, the implementation of the 2010 constitution, now nine years late on fiscal matters, started in earnest. First, on the agenda, introduce faceless currency notes. It caught the faceless gunny bag guys by surprise. But they recovered spectacularly. Overnight, they became ardent, adept and adroit sports gabblers, winning then losing millions within spans of minutes.
“If you learn to fly without perching, I learn to shoot without missing” the master paraphrased another one. The online gambling platforms were closed leaving in their wake these gabbling fanatics and addicts with severe withdrawal symptoms.
The quarry from the quarry is injured.
