Safara wins big and shakes hands on a deal down at Makaburini...

Malindi started off very well for me, Mike Safara, Kenyan hustler.

Landing at MIA (Malindi International Airport) last Friday, I was met by a very pleasant woman called Noni Mbuguas, of ‘Non-Concepts’ who took me straight to my hotel to rest, after a brief meeting where she gave me the brief.

“I was told by a friend of Mr Li, a Ned Malanda, that you have a silver tongue for sales,” Noni, a very nice woman of about 50, said. “There is a dilapidated villa in Makaburini area that is going for Sh8.5 million that has been a bit hard to sell.”

“Mr Li mentioned it to me in passing,” I said, thanking the Lord for the day I saved the Gang Dong mall owner from a robbery last December.

Without his contacts, I would be living in the streets, so always expand networks if you are a hustler like I am in this Kenya.

“We have a client, Gedeng, coming in tomorrow to view the villa,” Noni Mbuguas told me. “If you can convince him to buy it, you get one per cent of the sale price, Mikey.”

“That’s just 85K out of eight million. 500K, Madam Mbuguas,” I said.

“Look,” Noni said, leaning forward. “We have the property and the client. Your job is just to close the sale, for a whopping 85K.”

“If it’s so easy, then why did you bring me into the equation, dear Noni?”

“Two per cent,” she said. “And that’s it. I am only getting 10 per cent of the deal.”

Ahhh, I thought – a contractor, who was sub-contracting me.

Like the tenant who rents a house, and then sub-leases it out as an Airbnb!

The next day, Sato, I was on site at the Makaburni villa just off Boribo road, a white walled double-story five-bedroom affair with a great view, lush with palm trees and a drained pool, when a tall dark guy in khaki shirt, pants and Safari boots arrived in a double cabin car, with a mzungu dressed like he had come straight from Hawaii in those super-colourful shirts, shorts and loafers.

“I am Gedeng and this is my client, Alex Serkov from Ukraine,” the dark dude said.

‘'How many middle men does this deal have?’ I thought to myself, without irony.

I read somewhere in Business Daily that the reason there isn’t much money circulating in the economy right now is because we owe the Chinese billions, IMF ime tukazia and jobs are becoming scarce as few new investors are creating employment. Every time a kibunda of money moves, we middlemen proliferate.

Hustlers are like a pack of wild dogs in the savanna, so that the few times a big kill like a buffalo happens, we congregate to feed, even if it is just a tough hoof and skinny tail – as long as it helps us survive to hope for big game hunt another day.

“Mr Serkov,” I thrust out my hand. “What led you to decide to buy land in Kenya?”

“My property in Kharkiv was bombed by the Russkis,” Hawaii Alex said dryly. “Thank God I was here on business, and I thought ‘Alexy, just buy a villa in Kenya.’”

“Hapa Kenya, bwana, hakuna matata!” Gedeng said, gleefully rubbing long hands.

The next three hours were a tough four-way negotiation for me, with Noni Mbuguas who claimed she wasn’t feeling too well joining us virtually by Zoom from the nearby Saffron, but not saying very much as the talks proceeded.

Sh7.5 million was the most I could squeeze out of the Gedeng and Alexy show!

Noni gave me her approval through the private side chat box.

“How and when will you be making the 10 per cent deposit for the villa?” I said.

“Deposit?” Serkov frowned. “I do right away, a bank transfer from Kyiv, da?”

Seeing my sheer surprise at the swiftness of the deal, Gedeng smiled and asked: “Just because you are in Coast, you imagined that it would take forever, Safara?”

“Now we can renovate hotel, and you take over as the manager,” Alexy said.

“You want me to manage the hotel for you too?” I gasped.

Looking at me like I was from Mars, Gedeng said: “He is talking to me, Michael.”

But I was too over the moon to be embarrassed at my presumptive gaffe. This was 140 K in the bank for three hours work, yet in some hustles, I had sweated for an entire month to earn quarter that sum. The life of a Hustler, kweli, is a very unpredictable, lopsided one. One minute you are in the doldrums, the next day you are in clouds, lo and LOL.

That evening at the Saffron, we celebrated with Noni and the former owner of the villa, Lona Ayugi, who simply transferred 140 K to my MPesa. It felt unreal.

“How did a young woman like Ayugi end up with a whole villa here?” I asked Noni after a very merry Lona had left after dinner, leaving us a bottle of expe whiskey.

“She was married to an old Italian who left us,” Madam Mbuguas said.

“He passed away?” 

“He fled to Italy during Covid-19 in April, 2020.”

“Didn’t they have it far worse there, Noni?”

“Si you know how some zoongs thought it will hit Africa harder than Europe?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Corona got him there and he passed on. The irony of it.”

“Yuh!” Nons said.

But after an hour, a bit ‘happier’ on her whiskey, she told me the true story.

Signor Bassi had indeed gotten Covid-19 in Italy, but he had made a full recovery.

Shida began when he tried to return to Kenya, and some bigwig at Immigration mysteriously ‘sat on the visa.’

After three years, Lona had divorced Signor Bassi for desertion, and put the villa on the market, but it had been hard getting a buyer because it was next to a cemetery. I had also gotten lucky today, as Ms Mbuguas had assumed it was another superstitious African buyer (Gedeng), not knowing he was a front for Alex.

Now I understood why Gedeng had said: “We’ll need to bring in fully grown trees to the roadside, get rid of the road signs, and close off this barabara to guests.”

It also explained the silence of Noni on the call, realising she’d lost out on 140K – at least until I saw documents on Monday that showed her cut was actually 12.5 per cent!

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