We are in Eldoret. A friend of a friend invited me because his friend was doing a housewarming bash. Built a massive, tacky, and garish house—expensive if not extravagant. The kind that politicians like to build. I am not surprised, but I remain unimpressed.
Specifically, we are in Kapsoya, which I hear is like what Milimani is in Kisumu, or what Nyari is to Nairobi. There are a lot of Sudanese here, but then again, there are a lot of Sudanese everywhere. Everyone is speaking Kalenjin, which sounds about right, and from first glance, you’d think I am Kalenjin too. I am wearing a ka-ruto hat, and I don’t seem affected by the fuel hike. What fuel hike? If I were to park the car and get out nobody would take me for a visitor; I could be the guy who supplies meat to the residents’ houses. I could be on my way home to my girl.
The friend’s friend, let’s call him G— , was now a big shot, a ‘communication expert,’ otherwise known as a blogger. He was funny, seemed mildly competent, but he was a terrible liar, and I seemed to be the only person at his dinner table who realised this. He, too, like the president, had come from being a nobody to being a somebody, and now everybody wants him because he can access anybody.
He was talking about the things the government was doing, the big plans to take us here and there, doing this and that, and how all pain is temporary pain. He seemed genuinely convinced, his faith bordering on the evangelical, using big words like Panglossian, and he sounded to me like how I believe I sound to all those girls I sell hopes and dreams to.
G— was eager, and were it not for the double masters degrees he hung up on his wall (one in political science, the other in development communication, if you must know) I’d have thought him a fool. This tiny detail mortified me, and I was embarrassed for the two of us, the way your mother is embarrassed when you tell her you are into horoscopes and believe in ‘energies’ despite her raising you Anglican.
He was singing the hosannas and the hallelujahs, serikali this and serikali that, and he would not concede an inch. I knew better than to correct him, lest a Subaru hoist my ass to the nearest dam in Mogotio. Fuel hike? Blame the US-Iran war, and besides, let’s promote public transport. Cost of living? Bei ya fertilizer imeshuka. Gen Z? Entitled brats. President Ruto? The man with a plan, mbele iko sawa na by the way, it is Dr Ruto.
When you tried to ask him what the plan was, and where we were going, and how we will get there, he would brush you aside and say, “Watch this space.” He spoke like he was the government, having traded his autonomy for economy, but I had come to the realisation that he was no more government than I was the King of France.
I genuflected, getting into the mood of the occasion. I figured, best not to overthink it. I got on with the program, played the gallery. I, too, could not believe my humility in the face of corrupt power. I discarded all my revolutionary tweets about terrible politicians and smiled at his jokes.
Everyone called him Chairman, and so I did, too. He wore a Garmin on his wrist that measured everything from his heart rate, step counter, to blood pressure. I bet it could tell him if he was low on oxygen, too, which it didn’t, because he wasn’t. I knew that Garmin didn’t come cheap because even the fake ones that my friends wear aren’t cheap either!
I did quick math of what it would take me to own it: one year and three months if I give up buying tomatoes (nyanya moja ni 15 bob!) and eat only noodles and sossi soya.
But I fear I have been compromised. I remember a story, or maybe it was no story, of a certain government minister who was once called by the president in the midst of a hangout with his friends. Legend has it that the minister, upon seeing the call, stood up, saluted, and picked up the call while standing erect. Apparently, if the president, Mtukufu Rais, calls you, you must stand, even if you can’t! The vestiges of colonialism, the poverty, the corruption, the inferiority complex—this is the true legacy the British left us when they checked out in ’63.
Yet here I was. I wanted to throw in that Bien line, presence is not submission, but I know once the pictures leak online, nobody would believe me. I had the feeling of being part of the posse. A sad state of affairs, but a truth. I looked at G— and found that conforming still does not grant one respectability. That you have been to State House for lunch doesn’t do very much for you. But man must live.
That’s the thing—man must live—a term I learned from Ezekiel Mphahlele’s eponymous short story. It’s a tragicomedy about Khalima Zungu, an ordinary man who struggles to survive as best as he can, making the most of life’s opportunities. Seeing G— rap off his ‘access-is-success’ schema, all I could think about was Khalima Zungu and his philosophy of life. Let men deride you, let them mock you, let them say that you don’t earn your living honestly, but they too will soon realise the hard, cold, indispensable truth that man must live, live abundantly.
