As my kudos goes out to those who got shortlisted as the
Kwani Short Story Competition ended a few days ago, I promised I would publish my submission anyway, so here I am to fulfill that promise. Twas a quickly written piece, so most of the soul of it is still missing. I wrote it sometime last year so maybe, just maybe it was a prophetic piece to the fake money scam that the Jicho Pevu crew have been covering recently. Enjoy the first part:
TRANSFORMER MONEY
It’s a scene from Armageddon or something of the sort. Pure pandemonium! A government parastatal jam packed with queues of civilians screaming obscenities at the people behind the counter who are in turn screaming obscenities into their telephones in between mayday calls for help. Above the din, frantic beeps from machines ring all over the place. KK guards swing their batons indiscriminately, in the fashion of kids in a P.E class told to find playing space. In fact, if the guards were wearing army garb instead of their navy blue askari uniform, this scene would rekindle one’s memory of the 1982 coup attempt. Welcome to KPLC offices, the Eldoret branch to be exact. Today, in an unsolicited show of solidarity with the rest of Kenyans suffering due to their indiscriminate power rationing programme, they have decided to ration themselves! Yes, that’s right, they’ve cut off their own power supply and now the cashiers are working double time to serve as many customers as possible before their computers’ backup charges die and condemn them to a day of idling (not to mention the joy I can see in their eyes). Nobody wants to be left outside the “UPS” window, hence the howling. How can you ration your own self? The height of lunacy is what this is! Lunacy!
I’m third in one the queues, wiping off a spray of saliva emitted on my right ear by the chap directly behind me who has been shouting “Punda wewe, kwani hujui kutumia computer?” , the abuse and saliva no doubt aimed at the rather confused teller serving our line. I’m minding my own business though. You see, returning to university after the long vacation around here almost always involves “squaring” with the KPLC punks whether or not you pay the electricity bill. The moment they detect your prolonged absence, they cut off the supply to your house and tell the caretaker, a wisecracking chain smoker called Peter to ask you why you didn’t “leave something” behind for them. So here I am attoning for that particular sin in the form of a 200 bob bill on top of 580 bob as reconnection fees. I finally get to the teller and clear the bill. Now off to the Connection -Reconnection desk.
The Connection- Reconnection desk is another theatre in itself. I’ve dealt with those punks long enough to know that a receipt will not automatically deal with my problem. The punk who sits behind that desk is a Kale by the name Murkomen. He’s a dark skinned chubby fellow who had inkling for wearing colour clashing ties and undersize blazers, perhaps an attempt to show off his gold coloured cufflinks. He’s in his late twenties and looks like a gentleman among makangas and a makanga among gentlemen. He is that type of person who could sit pretty in any setting of society be it the loaded land owners sipping iced tea in Eldoret Club or the hoodlums at the Municipal market. His cunning eyes regard me with half interest as I explain how I’ve already paid my bills now all that’s left is authorizing the reconnection. He looks at the bill doubtingly, raising it up to the light the way one would to a thousand bob note. I almost miss his other elbow switching off his computer’s monitor.
“Eh boss, hii receipt yako inaonyesha wapi umelipa reconnection?” he asks.
“Bill si ni two hundred hapo kwa receipt na nimelipa seven eighty, kwani hauoni?” I reply.
“Itabidi niconfirm kwa comp na comp imeisha moto.”
“Comp inawork, umezima screen tu!”
Murkomen is obviously annoyed that I’ve detected his cunning. “Ni wewe ama ni mimi ndio anajua mambo ya hii machine?”
“Fine! How can you help me then?”
He goes on to explain how no work is going on at the moment, how the rationing will delay my reconnection, how it will be processed tomorrow, how they have to look for the technicians, and how they technicians will come around at their own pleasure. The usual standard drill of inefficiency. I begin to sense that a lot of begging will be required here.
“Ah, Murkomen, bana, nisaidie tu…kuna vile nina project ya shule na sijamaliza kuitype…am really desperate!”
His face contorts as if in thought process, for a while then he abruptly closes the files in his station, switches off the computer (properly this time), rises up and beckons me to follow him. We get out of the building into the sunshine filled street. Murkomen looks around uneasily before speaking in a half whisper.
“I took you out here because I didn’t want my boss hearing what I’m going to say. Unajua kwa uchumi ya siku hizi lazima upige hesabu chap chap. Ukikatiwa stima, usilipange reconnection fees. Wewe kam ubonge poa na mimi nicheki vile ntakusort. So tutado hivi…”
The plan is that he will sneak out of the office after I chota 200 bob, then we take a mat back to my place and he would do the reconnection himself. Since he hasn’t recorded the payment of the reconnection fees, the 580 bob will be carried forward to the next month’s bill. Hmmm… sounds like a good enough deal, compared to waiting for the right people to come at their own discretion. I’m actually surprised that Murkomen has stooped that low and confirmed my theory of his ability to fit in even with the most desperate. A concealed exchange of cash and we’re good to go.
I was told this jamaa is talkative, but I didn’t expect he would yap this much. All through the ride home, he’s been the one yapping like he’s getting paid, drifting without pause from one topic to another.
“Hii corruption haitawai isha Kenya, mtu asikudanganye…aki! Ringera anajua tunakula unga ya 52 kweli? Hahaha! By the way, tungepanda taxi lakini kuangusha two hundred kwa taxi ni muadhara. Afadhali Tusker moja na fries hivi…Wacha nikushow, sisi watu wa stima ni kama polisi, hauwezi kutuharakisha. Ukikuja na maharka zako tutakuaangalia tu!”
We alight at a muddy stretch of road leading to my hood and briskly jump over the water paddles, keeping to the grassy kerbs as much as possible. It is obviously a tedious task for my chubby companion who is trying to preserve the little shine on his thin soled shoes. We are soon passed by a bunch of three girls walking right in the mud, courtesy of knee-length boots. Aren’t those out of fashion? I recognize the one in the middle instantly. We call her Longoria or Beauty and the Beasts, the first name attributed to her slim model like figure augmented by generous C-cup boobs and the second one due to her two ironically plus size BFFs who are always by her side, everywhere she goes. I’ve never understood this strange symbiosis. Case of an insecure blonde in need of validation versus two fatties with image issues? Whatever it is, that sort of company can’t get any of them laid.
Murkomen’s eyes are also trailing the swinging butts ahead, his pupils moving in synchrony with one of the Beasts’ huge hips left-rights. He has been strangely quiet, hungrily breathing in the sight of feminity in its rawest form, held back from their full glory by faded jeans and peeping G-strings; his eyes bearing the look of a recovering chain smoker stumbling upon a secret stash of Sportsman packs. He blurts out finally, “Sijui nini mbaya leo, lakini naskia kufanya tabia mbaya!”
I’m both taken aback and very entertained by this brutal honesty. “Najua yule manzi mslim,” I reply after a hearty laugh and point at Longoria. “Kama una mistari za kutosha, naeza kupigia intro!”
He’s not impressed with Longoria’s modest ass, he’s more interested in the ones sandwiching hers and makes this point known to me. “Ah, wacha hizo, wazee kama sisi tunapenda kuendesha gari kubwa!” he says. He pauses for a while, fidgeting with the metal around his ring finger. “Let me tell you something. Don’t get married anytime soon, you hear me?”
“Hmm, I’m planning to get hitched around 32,” I reassure him.
“32? If I was you right now, I’d have married at 44. Just get a good well paying job, get a car then you can be coming here and park next to the University gate and point at any of these ladies with two thousand bob in your hand and tell her ‘YOU…I want you in here now!’ …trust me they’ll be fighting for you. I missed that.”
“What happened with you?”
“Boss, it’s a long story. I got caught in the wrong side of the equation. Just know some women have devils hidden in them,” he soldiers on as an afterthought, “na pia usitafute manzi kutoka Nyeri, hawa ndio wana madevo, angalia tu Lucy Kibaki!”
We laugh off those devilish thoughts as we approach my hood. The hood’s social stratum is literally divided by the Nairobi-Eldoret highway. On one side is the Sukunanga area, a place quickly transforming to a slum-like habitation. The mother of dingy joints, hotels with TV screens perpetually tuned to Citizen TV or Sayari and street vendors deep frying hairy chunks of pork and roasting maize late into the night. If you know your way around you can access almost anything illicit – weed, stolen electronics and, occasionally, stolen bottles of Meakins Rum or Richot with Ukwala Supermarket stickers still in place. The good thing about this side is that you can get scratch cards of hundred shillings and over for when Safaricom have those bonus airtime offers compared to our side’s student friendly 20 bob scratch cards. Quite a number of freshmen find themselves living in shabby hostels there, steeped in culture shock before they wise up and ‘cross over’. The other side is composed of middle to high class hostels and living quarters, each place given a high sounding name like Muthaiga, State House, Runda or Tamarind. Where I live is right in the midst of this model suburbia. The landlord had the gall to name the place Mushroom. We tried selling the alternative name of Lavington but everybody has stuck to Mushroom or Uyoga.
True to his word, Murkomen works his magic on my meter between showing me which wire goes where and my house is soon illuminated. “Huyay!” he triumphantly shouts. “And if you ever have such a problem, don’t hesitate to do the right thing and come and see me kando.”
I appreciatively hand him an extra 50 bob note for ending my troubles and see him into a town-bound mat but not before he prescribes other means of “doing the right thing” including his e-mail address and Telkom Orange numbers. I watch as the mat departs, curiously slanting to the left, clearly the work of my chubby friend who has sat comfortably at the back left. He will probably pop into a pub for some lunch time beer with the two hundred he has just earned. To drown away his sorrows, the devils in women and such. My thoughts quickly fade out to a state of angst. Why? Well, my senses have been polarized by a deep bass voice repeatedly calling out a name only used by only my mother and relatives from shags when referring to me.
“Oyash! Oyash! OYASH!”
* * *
The story continues
HERE..
