MR SURVIVOR: How Njaanuary has thrown me into marital Siberia
I ate life with a big spoon during the last financial quarter of the year. What I forgot then was that good things in life do not last forever.
The mouth that eats the seeds is the same one that asks what it will plant.
That proverb from our sages aptly captures my laughable but sad financial embarrassment just a few days after the Christmas braggadocio. With my bonga points completely finished, my Queen has suspended me to marital Siberia.
You will certainly remember how I ate life with a big spoon during the last financial quarter of the year. Swimming in the World Cup boom, which was closely followed by the Nairobian migration to Happy Valley, I got instant promotion from a loafer at Happy Valley to an important patron at Kichakani Paradise Resort. And that was life in its fullest. What I forgot then was that good things in life do not last forever. As our people are wont to say, good things have their owners.
Immediately after Christmas, signs that the New Year was going to treat me unkindly started emerging. The Nairobian immigrants did not use my Concorde on their trip back; they chose to walk or use the cheap death traps: our bodabodas.
On the last day of 20222, a Saturday, Concorde did not make a single trip. And, having gathered dust at Happy Valley’s parking bay, my enemies wrote siogi na sitaoga on the rear windscreen.
Now, as a family tradition, I am in charge of buying meat at the Palace. You see, I have a very strong suspicion about butchers, but that is a story for another day. In view of the downturn financial reality, I immediately adjusted in terms of quantity and quality of the meat that I bought. Instead of the hind leg of a goat, I went down to the intestines of a bull. Queen did not take that radical climb down in social class kindly. On the morning of New Year, she confronted me.
“Kwani, what are your new year resolutions concerning us?” Queen asked.
“Happy New Year dear! Why do you ask?” I responded.
“Don’t dear and Happy New Year me! New Year is supposed to bring out the new and the best of a person but you have gone back to your evil past!” she lectured.
“What have I done this time?” I asked her.
“Why do you pretend? You are feeding your family on rubber instead of meat!”
In a well-rehearsed family drama, the future leaders joined.
“Hii nyama inanuka vibaya sana,” said our last born.
“Wacha hivyo, ni kali kama taya ya gali,” said our second born.
“Mimi sikuli hiinyama tena, inakaa kama nyoka,” said our last born.
“Sufuria zangu hazipiki nyama ya nyoka tena!” Queen concluded.
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This provided our Palace manager with an opportunity to pledge her loyalty to me, something she always does to hit back at Queen, and for a reason I have never understood. “Afadhali nyinyi mnanyama inakaa kama nyoka. Kuna watu Kenya hii hawana chakula,” Makena said.
“Where is that one coming from? This is my house and I shall not buy those ogre stories of yours!” Queen shouted.
“I was just saying it in good faith,” Makena pleaded.
“I know the two of you for who you are. Don’t think I have forgotten your evil business at that evil valley. You eat chicken there and bring rubber for us children of a lesser God!” Queen shouted.
“Haiya haiya. I am very sorry.” Makena thinned herself and evaporated to the kitchen.
“Oh! Stop it. This is a new year and I had hoped we would start it in peace as a family. But it seems you have gone back to your bad old ways of last year,” I said.
“The Bible says that you cannot put new wine in an old wine skin. Just make your choices and make them wisely. Choices have consequences” Queen said. And with that, she left the sitting room in a huff, signalling an end to any further communication between us.
And from the way the shot skit ended, it was obvious we were not going to have the Sunday and New Year family outing, which actually was a great relief to me because I was limping financially. I grabbed that chance of incommunicado to leave the Palace before anything dangerous happened.
And that, my friends, has been my unenviable marital position at the Palace since New Year day. It has been a Njaanuary of distress for me but like the survivor that I am, I am working on a radical bottom-up financial model that will earn me not only good cash but also enough redeemable bonga points to warm my way back to marital nirvana. To all of you, friends and enemies alike, I wish you a prosperous new year.
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