Safara acquires a ‘bar’ from a deal gone wrong

By Mike Safara
After that strange incident with my first client and the extorting Motaro couple, business boomed in my ‘AirBnB’ over the next two weeks, so that I had a cool Sh45,000 in the bank.

This was because after that incident, we had bonded with the caretaker, Dog (I never asked him why Mbwa?), and he had told me that, actually, almost half the apartments in the building were short rentals, run by the landlady herself, a top corporate banker called Priscilla.

But she seldom came around, so that it was Dog doing the actual donkey work of setting them up, renting them out, and cleaning afterwards. “Yet nalipwa tuu salo ya caretaker...”

Sensing his discontent, the Hustler in me immediately detected an opportunity in Dog’s resentment at being an unpaid janitor.

“Why don’t you, when people call you for any AirBnB in the building, direct them to mine, Dog?” I said. “We will charge them Sh3,500, and you can take Sh500 from each rental.”

“So sasa sisi ni ma-partner kwa hii biz?” Dog asked, his eyes shining.

“You bet!” I said, firmly shaking hands.

And that is how I ended up with my short rental having clients every day for an entire fortnight.

Until landlady Priscilla called me on Monday at noon, and I imagined that face I only saw sometimes on Business Daily newspaper as she said she was going to have to terminate my lease, pronto!

“Why?” I cried.

“I want a relative to move in there,” she lied, voice smooth as lacquered velvet.

“You have to give me a month’s notice at the end of the month,” I said.

“That’s alright,” she purred. “You will pick up your notice from Douglas, to move by Feb 28 this year.”

“Feb 29,” I said peevishly. “It is a Leap Year.”

“Let’s just say March 2, Saturday, so you don’t have the hassle of moving on a weekday, Mike,” she said, magnanimously. “Also, in February, you can live off your deposit. I think that is fair.”

Personally I thought it was very unfair! I had just hit a goldmine, and now it was already gone?

Not yet, Safara, I thought. You’ve still got 50 days, so you will make your 150k clean, then ciao!

Back at Priscilla’s Palace (name of apartment block), I soon unraveled what had happened.

Dog, a lakeside lad, with Sh500 spare daily from our ‘partnership,’ was buying Cheptoo at the gate lunch daily for Sh150, and had bragged to her about our special arrangement (exaggerating that he got a cool Sh1,500 cut to impress her). Somehow, Amos Mutiso, the night guard, found out (he also fancied Cheptoo) and ran to Priscilla to get rid of a rival. This love triangle had cost me my ‘empire.’

I decided to go to Natasha’s Bar across the street for a drink to drown my sorrow that evening, but it was closed. My barber next to this popular Wines & Spirits stall also told me Naliaka, Natasha’s salon assistant, hadn’t returned from Western after the New Year holiday.

“Huyo ashaoa mtu wa boda,” he added bitterly.

As if by telepathy, my phone rang. It was a frantic sounding Natasha on the other end, and she needed me to go down to the police station.

“But isn’t your boyfriend a cop?”

“Just kuja. Wacha kuniuliza maswali mengi kama ya polisi!”

Smelling an opportunity
Turns out that Natasha, at her other stall business in the CBD of selling new clothes, had given some stock worth 100k to a Hope in the neighbouring stall to sell over Christmas and New Year for a commission. Since Hope didn’t have capital to buy clothes to sell, and Natasha needed a week off for a family re-union somewhere in Kiambu, it was a win-win situation. 

Except that Hope disappeared with the stock!

When Natasha and her cop boyfriend finally tracked Hope to a stall in another part of town, and caught her red handed selling the same clothes, Natasha lost it. Holding Hope, who was petite, from behind, Natasha then instructed her police boyfriend to ‘discipline this lil thief!’

The man pistol-whipped Hope so bad, she ended up in hospital.

It was neighbouring shop sellers that intervened, with the policeman maneuvering his way out (by threatening to shoot) but Natasha was mobbed, roughed up a little bit, then frog marched to the police station, as Hope was taken to hospital.

“I need 50k cash bail,” Natasha pleaded. “When I sell out my bar stock, Mike, I will give you 60k.” I considered the offer overnight from Tasha, with whom we had had a short lived fling, before I found out her predilection for crazy men in uniform.

“Here’s the deal,” I told her the next day at the police station, where she was looking quite whacked out, “Since Naliaka hasn’t returned, I will take over your pub for the next 50 days, sell stock, as you concentrate on your clothes stall in tao. I get my 60k, plus 25k for labour.” “Sawa,” Natasha said, and signed the agreement I had handwritten. Then I paid her cash bail.

[email protected]