Was I a victim of a conman?

An old guy walks into the newest bank in town, he wants to open an account and it’s only the Manager that can assist him. So I see him.

He is one of these talkative types that can spend a whole morning shooting the breeze and says he is a big shot owning properties in various towns and cities across Kenya though his weathered looks, nondescript dressing and bad teeth don’t indicate it. I have dealt with enough old men over the years who have made heaps of money through their various business ventures at the expense of crooked or non-existent teeth. If you have so much money the least you should do is fix your teeth for crying out loud! He wants to open an account for a group of which he is the Treasurer.

He walks with a limp and has a fascinating story…………..why do guys with bad teeth have so much to say…………….. and why to me? He walks with a limp because he was involved in a serious accident on Mombasa Road a few year back as he rushed to his hotel somewhere in Machakos County where a deal worth millions was stewing awaiting his signature. This is where it gets interesting because the accident was a head on collision with a trailer and he was doing 190 km/hr!

I am no expert at these things but surviving a head on collision at 190 km/hr with a possible closing speed of over 220 km/hr between the two vehicles.....a trailer being one of them is fatal from whatever angle you call this one but I am just narrating what he told me. He gets comfortable; after all he has a rapt bank manager that wants his account and continues with his story...and by the way I didn’t bother to ask him what type of car he was driving.

He explains how after the accident his legs were badly damaged on impact but he somehow survived but was confined to a wheelchair. The experts and hospitals he visits in Kenya are not mincing their words and tell him that they need to amputate and he shall never walk again. One of the hospitals however offers him a second opinion of referring him to an Indian Hospital so long as he pays the full fee in Kenya of Kshs. 3.6 Million. By now he claims to have spent in excess of Kshs. 3 Million without any positive developments including specialists, operations and weeks in hospital recuperating from his injuries.

Long story short he finally chooses to go to India after talks with a friend and after sending his X-rays to one of the leading hospitals there for a second opinion and the Indian doctors tell him that they don’t need to amputate. They can instead do hip replacement surgery and after 4 weeks he should be able to walk again all this at a total cost of Kshs. 860K. I wish they had also told him that they could fix his teeth too for 10K. After a few months of recuperation back home in Kenya he is able to walk with the aid of a cane and now no longer requires it but the limp is permanent.

Then he gets into the reason why they need to open an account. It’s a safety net for him and 29 of his elderly friends many of whom don’t have the resources to manage a huge medical bill. They shall be contributing Kshs. 500.00 per person per day a cool Kshs. 15K for the group and need an account where they can bank this money and why not the newest bank in town. In fact, he goes on, they recently held a successful fund raiser for one of their group members who required Kshs.1.9 Million to offset medical bills after an illness and he is rushing to Nairobi for another fundraiser to try and raise the difference and, without batting an eyelid, asks me to chip in something!

That was 7 days ago, and they guy hasn’t shown up. I am not sure if he was a con man or not. I had thrown in some names of some people I know in Machakos and he had given me an elaborate history of one of them so maybe he does have a hotel in that county and he does know the people that I mentioned. My Kshs. 500.00 contribution to his harambee may have been in vain and may have gone towards buying a drink for his friends…..while laughing at the gullible bank manager, but I’d recognize him from his bad teeth any day and if he is a resident of Nanyuki our paths shall surely cross.

And that folks was my baptism as we opened for business in Nanyuki and I am now Kshs.500.00 (if truth be told it was a whooping Kshs. 1,000.00) poorer!

I am now resident in Nanyuki:

I’ve finally moved to Nanyuki. It was a journey that began almost 4 years ago with a sojourn through Nyeri for two and a half years.

It is a very cosmopolitan town much like Nairobi. The town has restaurants and hotels galore to cater for any ‘kabila’ under the sun. There are the places catering to the mzungu crowd at 350 bob a beer and those catering to the wazee at 160 bob a beer…..just like Nairobi. They have Indian and Chinese restaurants selling almost authentic cuisine…..just like Nairobi. All the mzungu joints sell pizza…….just like Nairobi. This is a town with a heartbeat, a pulse and always on the move despite the dust, clouds and clouds of the stuff.

In retrospect the Nyeri County government got it right with tarmacking the footpaths in Nyeri town because that is one dust free town when compared to Nanyuki……..even if, as it was widely rumored, someone made a killing in the process.

So back to Nanyuki. It took me some time to get a house that I felt mirrored my stature in society. After all a bank manager has to live in a half decent house in the better part of any town and by Nanyuki standards I think I nailed it. The house however is nowhere near the class of my abode in Nyeri which is a revelation given that this town is home to BATUK, the Laikipia Air Base and more high class tourist lodges and game ranches than anywhere else in Kenya and I had assumed would have better quality of residential facilities. At one place that I visited while house hunting, I was told that the entire structure 12 to 15 apartment units had been booked and paid for by the British Army and the developers were now redesigning the place to suit the needs of the soldiers soon moving in!

Put it this way, those who can afford a ton of cash for a house are well catered for as are those who just need a humble abode for amounts upto 12K in rent so long as you are not very particular with the surroundings. The rest of us in the middle are another thing altogether, we don’t have a very big pool to search from though that seems to be changing with a lot of residential construction that appears to cater for this missing middle about to be delivered to the market in the next few months.

The other day I met up with a potential client. After we had had our discussion it inevitably went around to the night life in the town and he wondered why he hadn’t seen me in the joints preferred by my age mates. He then went on to give me a list of the places that he thought I should frequent and mix with people of my ‘riika’, with an even longer list of places where I would be bombarded with loud music and youngsters and therefore should keep off!

Like the proverbial naughty boy who does the opposite of what he is told not to do I prefer to be a non-conformist and so last Saturday I visited the joint that was top on the list of places NOT to visit…….and I must say that I had a great time thanks to the funky music playing with a young hip hop crowd in a very well appointed setting. Granted I left fairly early by 10.00 am before the real noise started. It’s a place I’ll definitely want to visit again. On Sunday I visited the other place I was told not to frequent and I was also pleasantly surprised as it is somewhere I shall most definitely visit in future.

So I have my two bedroom house in a fairly upmarket location. Access is through a locked gate where the landlady also lives guarded by a posse of a duck and drake fearlessly unleashing a cacophony of sounds guaranteed to scare away even the most deviant of thugs should they decide to intrude on our little paradise. I have wonderful view of Mount Kenya most mornings as I make my way to work and I am still searching for that elusive barber shop who shall cater to my every whim.

Within the same compound albeit separate from the unit that I live in is an upcoming complex of 6 two bedroom apartment units marked with the ominous red “X” of the National Construction Authority supposedly for the developers not adhering to the authorities requirement of having a construction signage on site giving all the required details. Whether this is the truth or a cock and bull story, I’ll know soon enough when I get home and the complex has been demolished!!

And before I forget the bank has opened for business in Nanyuki. I’ll miss my work colleagues in Nyeri who threw a surprise breakfast bash in Nyeri last week where they gave me some parting gifts spiced with some equally kind words for being the absolute best boss that they have ever worked with……..or so they told me!

I’ll also miss my Rotary Club of Nyeri group that has been all the family that I needed when I was in Nyeri……..May you all live long and happy lives while keeping the Rotary fire burning.

I survived a dance with disaster:

Several years ago a local MP’s car somewhere in Yatta in current day Machakos County was swept away by a raging river as he attempted to make his way home one stormy and tempestuous night. All the occupants of the vehicle perished in that unfortunate incident with the mangled wreckage of the car being discovered several kilometers downstream the next morning.

Recently a similar calamity almost befell me and my wife one stormy night as we struggled to get home in Nairobi. Apparently due to a three hour continual and heavy downpour and with the storm water drainage unable to cope with the barrage of rain water and the culverts blocking due to the debris floated by the rains had caused the drainage to burst its banks and the resultant flooding covered the entire road. This has happened many times in the past with the water on the same road barely being 4 inches or so at the worst time that I remember.

Today however it was worse, far worse than I would have imagined. Having committed to crossing that flood that had inundated the road I ventured on into the darkness sure that it could not be more than 6 inches deep and therefore an easy crossing for a 4 wheel drive Subaru Forester vehicle!

I soon realized that the water was getting deeper and deeper with every forward motion of the vehicle. Soon it was almost covering the headlights of the vehicle at least a foot of flood water a bow wave preceding our forward momentum and the lights flickering with what I was sure was an electrical fault though it turned out to be the water lapping at the bottom of the headlights effectively blocking some of its glow. Almost in a panic I thought of all the social media articles on how to react in such a situation and the options available to me which were:

1. Stop and reverse and look for an alternative route home a sure way to stall the engine.
2. Charge the engine and gain speed to exit as quickly as possible another sure way to stall the engine due to the large bow wave and water getting into the engine compartment rapidly or
3. Continue at the same pace and hopefully cross that section of the road without stalling the engine but with a constant prayer on your lips looking to the almighty for his mercies.

I chose the final option and soon we were safely but barely out of the flooded section and home nervously laughing about our narrow escape and possible disastrous consequences.

I learnt several things that day that thankfully the water was partially stagnant and not rapidly flowing ensuring that the current did not float the vehicle and force it to veer off course and into the ditch. The other fear was that the flood waters may have cut of a part of the road which we could not see in the flood and darkness and hence we would be stuck on the road should this be the case.

Would I ever assume for a moment in future about the depth of a flooded section of the road in pitch darkness? I am not sure for now because ones instinct to get home is often so strong that you conveniently ignore any signs that there may be trouble lurking on the way more so when you are so close to your goal as we were that rainy night.

Even more intriguing was the fact that the door seals of the vehicle held firmly and no water seeped into the passenger compartment of the vehicle and importantly there appeared to be no engine damage either given that the engine turned over easily the next morning. That's kudos to Subaru's sturdy and well built vehicles.

By the time I was passing through the same section the next morning, the waters still had not receded and looking at the lake of water it was sobering that we had made it home in one piece and with the vehicles engine intact. I had dodged that bullet and there was there was no way I was going to subject myself to the same stress as the previous night so I used a different route to get to my destination.

With the ongoing rains and the possibility of running into a flooded section of the road here is a link to guide you on what to do in such an emergency.

http://smartdriving.co.uk/Driving/Driving_emergencies/Floods.htm

Be safe and vigilant.

The angry voices:

The angry voices startled me out of my reverie as I read my newspaper. It was the two ‘mzungu’ ladies that I had passed by, sticking out like sore thumbs in the gloom of the restaurant if for nothing else the bottles of Smirnoff Black Ice in front of them. They could have been students, tourists or missionaries in town for whatever reason but Smirnoff Black Ice at 1.30 pm just didn’t look right.

The reason for my piqued interest was simple. They were arguing with a waiter that it had taken two hours since ordering their lunch and there was still no sign of it. The waiter was imploring them to stay a few minutes longer and that the pizza oven was broken hence the reason for the delay. Their logical argument which I assume holds water in whatever country they come from was that if they were to wait any longer they were not going to pay full price for a meal that had taken two hours! They went on to argue that had someone taken the trouble to inform them beforehand that the pizza oven was broken they would have weighed their options and made an informed decision.

Now my interest was really piqued. They had mentioned pizza and I had ordered mine 20 minutes earlier and by my calculation it should have been ready by now. The waiter having seemingly exhausted his English vocabulary silently slunk away from the scene to be replaced a few minutes later by a chef in all his glory – top hat, rolled up sleeves and a towel tucked into his waist and all - who began a conversation with the ladies intent on convincing them to stay for lunch.

By now I was worried. How long would my pizza take I wondered silently and miserably. Was I going to be treated to one of those lousy services offered in many established restaurants in Nyeri town yet again? This after all was not just any restaurant but one of the better ones in town but with an unfortunate reputation for having very poor waiter service whether you are alone or in a group. It was also buy one get on free day on pizza but the crush of people you would expect on such an auspicious occasion was lacking thanks mightily and no doubt to the deplorable service levels at this hotel.

One thing I never understand is how a hotel can invest so much money in the CAPEX required to construct a hotel then fail spectacularly to offer services to the patrons of the hotel who meet the costs of managing and running the establishment. What loss of value to shareholders does such shoddy service do and importantly what does it say about the owners and managers of such a hotel?

How much does it cost to simply tell a customer that you expect some delay due to circumstances beyond your control and if they’d mind waiting? As a customer I believe that I am a rational and sane guy who just wants to be served professionally and with some decorum and basic decency. While I am not the yard stick by which tolerance can be measured as I tend to get quite antsy when forced to wait for a decent meal, it costs the establishment nothing by informing the client about any possible delays.

This reminds me of an episode a few years back where one of the leading Pizza eateries in Nairobi promised a free pizza if the delivery time from ordering your food to it being placed on the table took longer than 15 minutes. There was definitely something wrong on this particular day because my order took almost 20 minutes to be delivered. When I demanded a refund of my money based on the service promises, excuses became the order of the day that their pizza oven had broken down and hence the reason for the delay in service. I looked at the fine print in their info graphic and nowhere did it say “unless the pizza oven is broken” or any such disclaimer to deny me my rights. They even went to the extent of telling me that one of them would have to meet the cost of the pizza if I chose not to pay whereupon I retorted that it was not me choosing whether to pay or not but I was simply holding them to account for the delivery promise that THEY had made. I eventually got a refund but after all kinds of smiley faces came to my table to implore me to do the right thing and just pay for my pizza!

This time around there was no word on the delivery time for my pizza but it took almost 45 minutes to deliver to me by which time I had even stood up and was demanding to pay for the soft drink that I had consumed and forgetting about the food which had been preceded by my waiter approaching me to change my pizza order to one that was already ready – that the ‘mzungus’ had abandoned no doubt – which I flatly refused to accept. Mine had to be meaty and hot and the ‘mzungus’ pizza did not have any such meaty ingredients!!

My final plea to hoteliers is that a hungry man is an angry man particularly around lunch time so don’t keep them waiting longer than necessary!!

Do you love your nuts?

This post is intended for men only. It is a diatribe on manly, masculine stuff which is likely to raise the freckles on the pretty faces of sensitive ladies so ladies stop reading now or forever hold your peace!

"April is testicular cancer month" said the solemn sounding voice on the radio. "Finally something positive on radio other than politics" I thought to myself right before "Who comes up with these theme months anyway?"

The voice went on to appeal to men to self-check themselves for signs of testicular cancer while showering or just relaxing. "Just relaxing" I thought to myself, "Why has this voice decided to tell the whole world what we men do while just relaxing"?

Good grief is nothing ever sacrosanct in life anymore! What men chose to do or not to do in their spare relaxed time should be sacred to men. Now the secret is out for the women and children now know what we do when relaxed, we feel our nuts!!

I finally saw the info graphics about how to check for this killer condition in men going around on social media and everything swiftly fell into place! http://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=OIP.M6f40b9e097e6920bd723ebb425dbd5e0o0&w=300&h=135&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0&r=0 (it's not this link though as I couldn't find it!!)

I am sure the thought has crossed the minds of many women why that peculiar habit arose from. It's from a feeling of relaxation and contentment something many men can clearly relate to but not our women folk who wonder why the urge to reach down there also known as the family jewels department came from.

We do not feel ourselves down there in the family jewels department just for the heck of it, and certainly not when stressed simply because there is no satisfaction with doing this when the body is in fight or flight mode. Unlike footballers who have to protect their nether regions when confronted with a whizzing goal bound ball which is a stressful situation as you can discern with their halfhearted attempts to ward of a nuts bound ball, the rest of us men thankfully don’t suffer from that occupational hazard.

The importance of this area can only be explained by the story of the suicide bomber out to blow himself up recently who was arrested before he could accomplish his dastardly mission only to be discovered to have been wearing a piece of metal around his private parts supposedly to protect himself from the effects of the explosion so as to enjoy his time with the virgins waiting for him in the hereafter!!

And now we men now have an even better excuse when called to account for our 'dirty' action of reaching unconsciously down there when in relaxation mode that you're checking for signs of testicular cancer! Thanks to the voice on the radio you have all the reason to continue what you have been doing through the ages with the added reason that you do it for love not wishing to consign your wife to widowhood when you all along had the tools to check for early signs of testicular cancer right in your hands…..literally!!

Have a meaningful and cancer free month my fellow men and feel on as you continue loving your nuts!

And for those ladies that yet again refused to heed to my warnings………..and I see you there in the corner chortling away, now you know but never ask your men what they are doing idling in the family jewels department!!

I didn’t know what a drip tray was:

I get home early one Monday morning after a weekend in Nairobi with my family. There is this awful smell coming from somewhere in the house. It’s not over powering but it smells like something small has died and is putrefying. Or perhaps the house help who comes on Saturday to wash my clothes and clean the house in my absence may have switched off the fridge and now the meat has gone bad, I think to myself.

So I drop my stuff…..stuff here meaning my dirty laundry and the special lactose free milk that I can’t get in Nyeri and which my wife bought for me to bring to Nyeri. I am lactose intolerant and can’t digest regular milk so it’s the Kshs. 130.00 per half liter bottle for me of Bio, but I digress!!

I look in the fridge, and sniff about like one of those wolves I see on National Geographic channel as it sniffs the air for goodies, but nothing. That smell isn’t coming from inside the fridge which thankfully is switched on and my meat is nowhere near rancid. It can’t be my dirty laundry either as it was in the car with me or I would have noticed. For good measure I take an extra strong whiff of it confirming that it’s just the regular dirty laundry and correct manly smells!!

I look through the rest of the kitchen and house and other than what appears to be some liquid in a container bolted to the back of the fridge I can’t seem to find anything out of the ordinary. So I open the windows, spray some air freshener and after a shower off I go to perform my nation building duties!

Fast forward to evening! I have just come from the kinyozi and I am feeling well coiffed, itchy beard gone and hair looking smooth and lustrous…………..and jet black!! I feel and look 10 years younger. That smell is still there, pervasive and funky as ever and the house help is also at home. She has washed the dirty clothes and is cleaning the house and cooking my Monday evening dinner the leftovers of which I’ll have for Tuesday afternoon lunch or dinner depending on my mood.

She has also noticed the smell but can’t quite figure it out. She thinks it’s the container of liquid that I noticed in the morning but we can be sure because it’s hidden out of sight and you can’t even drain it properly. We conclude that the pallet that the fridge came on could have been stained by some liquids following a defrosting exercise a week ago and it probably just needs airing for the smell to clear. So we lift up the fridge, remove the pallet and she takes it outside the house to clear up the smell.

But this smell just won’t go away and I can’t think of what I’d say to any visitor that may come calling, though it’s unusual for me to get visitors anyway but who knows, someone could just visit me after the smell no longer bothers me and leave with a very poor impression about my personal hygiene habits!

So down on all fours I go to peer closely at this liquid thingy and using the corner of one of the kitchen towels try and drain the liquid. It is now crystal clear that this is the cause of the stench because the minute that towel soaks up that liquid the smell overwhelms. That this is the source of my problems is now clear!!

A closer look reveals that the container which I later find out is called a drip tray has been screwed onto the fridge with two small nuts which I promptly unscrew, gingerly lift the tray and empty the stinking brown contents into the toilet……….together with one of the screws that makes an audible splash as it disappears from view into the murky waters!!

But I can’t return the tray with only one screw and I don’t know where I can get a screw at this time of the night so like any clever chap and against my better judgement I have no choice but to reach in and pick up that screw which thankfully is still at the bottom of the toilet bowl after which I quickly flush away the remaining muck ensuring that it becomes someone else’s problem.

I then rinse of the drip tray, dry it off and then reattach it to its correct position and after a through wash of my hands with anti-bacterial soap and some apple cider vinegar thrown in just to be sure, I have solved my problem and there is no longer a malodorous odor in the house.

So next time you get a stench in your house whose source you can’t trace you have learnt from the expert that the drip tray on your fridge could be your source of woe and that’s how I found out what a drip tray was!!

My pretty neighbor:

She smiled at me this morning and waved at me shyly through the window and it made my morning and I can't stop thinking about her the whole day!! But let me start from the beginning because like many stories already written and yet others still unwritten, this is a love at first sight tale.

I live in an apartment complex of 12 units on three floors. One of my neighbors is a real looker, a cutie pie as one of my brothers would describe her, and though I don’t see her many times, the few times that I do my heart skips a beat. As she passes close to me on those few occasions that our paths crisscross I can’t help but look admiringly and longingly at her. She is shy and bashful and there is always a hint of a smile playing on her pretty face.

She reminds me very much of others who have been in my life in the not too distant past in her innocence and pureness, unsullied as yet by the difficulties of life and seemingly ignorant of the rat race scurrying around her. Wherever I see her, strains of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t she lovely” belt out stereophonically and loudly through my head as I wonder where she has been all my life. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts because I am old enough to be her father, her grandfather perhaps god dammit! But I can’t help myself.

The other day she talked to me! This pretty face actually shyly looked me over and asked me a question and my knees buckled. Why me, me of all the neighbors in all the complexes in Nyeri, why did she choose me to have a brief conversation with or was it my lucky day or was this perhaps just a cunning plan to entrap me?

She was almost surreptitious in her approach to a conversation, unsure of whether I’d respond to her request. But it had happened because she needed my help; she needed my help to assist in a rather difficult and delicate task for her to retrieve something that had been dropped over a fence. The God's of fate had smiled down on me and put me in this envious situation .

You see she is not cut out for climbing over fences and gates and so on but I would do it in a heartbeat, in a jiffy even……and I did soaring over that fence almost as it wasn’t there. Carl Lewis that champion hurdler of yesteryear would have been proud of me. And after all, ladies should never ruin their trousers on account of such things when a gentleman is around!!

She had dropped something, a ball actually, and she needed it to be picked up and for her to go back home. I guess it is possible to accidentally drop something and then be unable to retrieve it hence asking a kindly passerby to do the gentlemanly thing and I happened to be that gentleman who was at the right place and at the right time………or maybe she was baiting me looking out for me to exit my house and then dropping something at that opportune time so that she could strike up a conversation with me, I will never know!

Suffice is to say that I was happy to have been of assistance and if I had been a puppy I would have been wagging my tail furiously a million times a minute secure in the knowledge that I had been of assistance however brief and fleeting it had been to this angel.

So who is this amazing human being, a little girl who can’t be more than 2 years old that lives in my complex but who has an amazing command of English in a grown up sort of way. I don't believe that I was as confident back in teh day as the three and four year olds I see nowadays loaded down with books (as I would imagine) in their back packs confidently believing all that their teachers tell them.

This little girl reminds me of my own daughters all those years ago just starting off in their journey through life innocent and pure in their thoughts and actions. One of them was so precocious and adventurous when young that she almost got lost at Heathrow Airport as we waited for our connecting flight as we proceeded on a family vacation, her older sister being less adventurous firmly seated next to me despite my entreaties to look our for her little sister. That's why I feel weak in the knees when I see these young ones and marvel at what comes out of the mouth of these babes and boys.

Enjoy your kids while they are young because soon they will fly the coop and become independent and free then you'll wonder where time went!!