Dear reader, I have to tell you that sometimes, your feedback has me roaring with laughter, and that makes my day. This week I laughed so hard at some of your responses, I feared that I would burst a vein. If you recall, last week, I narrated how I foolishly invested in a hardware that never took off, leaving me licking my wounds and wondering how stupid I could have been.
The headline, ‘What’s the most foolish decision you have ever made?’ invited you to share with me your stories, and I must say that you didn’t disappoint, I felt less foolish after reading your stories, so, thank you from the bottom of my heart…
One narration especially had me in stitches, and I thought it would be selfish of me not to share the mirth, so I sought permission from Njeri to use her story as inspiration for my column today. Here goes.
“I once bought a fully stocked kiosk in 'Inda' near where I used to take my car for minor repairs. It seemed to do brisk business with the factories around. The elderly lady who owned it said she wanted to relocate to shags. I paid her cash after some negotiation, and the following weekend went there nice and early to clean up and install my employee. I was met by an empty space where the kiosk once stood.
When I looked around, I noticed what I should have observed earlier: all the kiosks there were structures placed on cemented bases and stilts, meaning they were movable! I imagined the lady grocer casually hiring a mkokoteni and relocating her bizna elsewhere. How could I be so foolish, so gullible? To make matters worse, when I told my mum about it hoping for sympathy, she gave me one long piercing look before saying: 'If fools did not go to the market, bad wares would not be sold' or words to that effect. I never told anyone else,” she ended.
After my laughter had died down, I could not help thinking that the dishonesty among some of our countrymen is downright appalling. It is stories like these that have turned us into skeptical human beings over the years, such that someone can die right before our eyes when we could have prevented the death because we fear that we are somehow being scammed.
It is such stories that explain how thieves and robbers have become so bold, robbing and killing in broad daylight in busy streets because experience tells them that no one will come to the aid of the person they are mugging.
It is such stories that have made some of us indifferent to human suffering, turned us into a suspicious society that views everyone we come across with a dubious eye.
Nowadays, thanks to scary stories of people being drugged using those drugs that rob you of your will-power, I blatantly ignore people who try to stop me in the streets to, ostensibly, ask for directions, yet in the past, I would patiently give directions, short of drawing the lost person a map.
It is said that once these drugs get into your system, you end up handing the criminals everything you have in this life - your Sacco savings, children, husband, wife, even all your weaves, and you know how expensive those things are...
And when I go to the market, if I am buying a bucket of, say, potatoes, I insist on the contents being emptied before they are put into my bag. I insist on this because stories abound of unscrupulous traders who tamper with the buckets, in the process selling you much less than you’re paying for. And the mama mbogas are not offended because they understand that some of their colleagues are dishonest.
You must have seen that video that did rounds some time back showing how someone had bought plump, healthy-looking avocadoes with a rich colour that tickled the taste buds, only to get home and realise that the fruits had been sprayed with a green colour to improve their appearance, and after just a day, they had begun to rot.
I don’t know about you, but this blatant dishonesty scares me.
