Dan Okwiri
Penning my journal. Someone teething retirement recently gassed to me, he is thinking about flogging all his assets and buying a home in leafy Karen. Thought to myself he lives a pretty stable life, why rock it for floss? He was adamant though, “Kilimani ain’t my ice cream, got to live a cushy finale.”
Let me dribble my thoughts on this, at 60 you’re beginning your injury time. A home in Karen comes at a cost that will make you roast. In Karen you need a squad consisting of a house manager, gardener & watchman. The average cost for each 30k, multiply by 3 and salt in their food we are on 120k. Pepper in the utilities which sets you back 30k, you’re singing a 150k monthly expenditure.
The squad controls the house, if you think you have privacy, you’re living a lie. The current genzee workforce is ungovernable! You will be dependent on the squad, they’ll hold you ransom. The house manager often the house madam’s confidante.
Let me spin you a true life story of a Karen pensioner, who lived a make believe world in broke, yet held on to the fantasy. Decades back in the late 50s there was a bloke tall, dark & handsome known as Masinde, he went with the late Njonjo to SA for studies. In the course of his studies met a foxy Zulu lady called Sibusiso.
He was drawn by her starry brown hazel nut eyes. Her silky yellow yellow skin enchanted him, which was a dichotomy in contrast to his charcoal dark Luyha lassies. Drooled on seeing her leggy shanks, and wobbly butt so well padded she didn’t need a seat. This was the woman of his wet fantasy.
SA was washed in the apartheid era, racial segregation demeaned lives of people of color, opportunities for black race wanting, everyone wanted out. Sibusiso was a green horn, jobless & frustrated saw Masinde as her ticket to green pastures. Masinde all his blood, sweat & tears into his studies and diligently completed his postgraduate degree in economics.
By the mid-60s he completed his academic journey, and he jetted into Embakasi Airport with his certificate & daisy love Sibusiso with two tots in hand warm & fuzzy. It was the 60s’, there were few graduates at the time, his home boy Njonjo now Attorney General quickly secured him a plum government appointment.
Masinde overjoyed journeyed to Butere in Western Kenya to introduce his darling to his parents & kith kin. The trip to Butere was arduous, the roads were atrocious, more of rutted cattle tracks. The place was bushy & backward compared to SA. The people there couldn’t converse much in English. The culture totally foreign, to them she was ugly as sin and a misfit.
Masinde’s father clearly unhappy with her & shocked she already had 2 children. They already had betrothed a Luhya girl for him and she was bedecked awaiting his arrival in jig. The whole village in sing ‘wanamberi” a hero has arrived. Masinde however had not notified his family about Sibusiso.
Tempers flew an intelligible octane exchange ensued, Sibusiso could sense she’s in hot funk, and whispered to her hubby it’s time to flee & dunk. Rejected, it was an anticlimax to her dreams. Sibusiso would never return to her husband’s home, and she wanted no business with his kith and kin. That’s how the cookie crumbles.
Masinde knew it was a done deal, between his family and Sibusiso, it was a no brainer, she mooned his world. From that day thereafter he cut off links with his lineage. Fate befall him, his father died soon after that in 1969, a very bitter man. He had sold everything for Masinde to go to SA but he ignored him, he cursed him apocalyptically in his deathbed. The pits, Masinde never attended his funeral, neither did he send condolences.
Despite the father’s curse Lady Luck would knock his door and he was appointed a Permanent Secretary. The perks were many including a government chauffeur, Mercedes and bodyguard. Kenya was in formative stage and a lot of construction was taking place. To slice the pie, Masinde pulled deals in sleaze, and no soon than later bought himself a lovely home in Karen.
Karen was a white suburbia, Masinde was among the first Africans to live in Karen. Sibusiso was delighted with her husband’s elevation. She now lived like the whites she had left in SA. They had made it, she ensured she took her children to white schools so that they may enjoy the facilities she was denied. The children cut off from kith & kin couldn’t speak their mother tongue.
Their quintessential quaint English style palatial home was gigantic with woodsy floors, 6 bedroomed on 4 acre grounds. They joined Karen Country club, where Masinde took up golf. To keep the home spick and span they had a squad of 4 to tend to the family needs.
By the early 80s Masinde’s children had completed school. He trooped them to the USA for further studies.
All things come to an end, by the late 80s retirement came knocking. Pull the rug under his feet, all the perks were withdrawn, and life as Masinde knew would change for keeps. The high-flier gig was over, he had depleted his swig. The financial punch of keeping a domestic workforce of 4 mooning. The bigger they’re the harder they fall.
Things became thick and Masinde distressed living a horror flick. He refused to downgrade to a smaller house even though his children no longer in nest, the home never had guest. Shot to hell, he now had reduced to having one house manager, and a casual laborer who would come and do his gardening twice a week.
The Karen neighborhood association in quake that his compound bushy reeling in snake. God forbid in the mid 90s, Masinde had a stroke. Now a melancholic alcoholic. His 2 children in the USA despite having plush jobs had abandoned Masinde just the way he too had abandoned his own dad.
Vengeance is sweet, to settle old scores Masinde’s father’s curse came true. Masinde at this juncture had no car, Sibusiso now aging had to walk a distance of 10 kms to the Karen shopping center to buy food. The lived hand to mouth on Masinde’s civil service pension.
The hospital visits were a struggle in muddle, she couldn’t afford the taxi, she relied on the mercy of their white neighbors for handouts & lifts who could see they were struggling. Masinde was stuck in his drum & rum, Karen was the only place he could call home. With a thick skin, stubbornly he still refused to sell.
Masinde lived in terrible pain, paralyzed on a wheelchair for 3 yrs in drain to his insane. To scream blue murder, cursing his own children, but even though they nowhere near to hear his obscenities. Sibusiso in the torrential swim faithfully mollycoddled her hubby in soft soap till his very dying day.
Apocalyptically, Masinde’s funeral at Langata would be attended by none other than his wife. Vipers in his own bosom his own children skipped it, like he did his father’s too. He was left to stew in his own juice, for the Langata worms ready in feast.
Like father like son, Masinde kicked the bucket in vexation leaving a next-generation curse on his children. The cycle won’t be broken, till hell freezes. Yada yada yada. There’s is something in the wind, generational curses are a real ordeal. To each his own stir fry.
So far, so good, within a month after his burial she advertised the house for sale. At this juncture she rocking her 60s’. To sweeten the pot Lady Luck did smile and she did fly a windfall of cash, 4 acres of land in Karen no pocket change, bagging her Kes 120 million cash on the barrel head. Too little too late, turn over his grave. Take the bitter with the sweet, Masinde sure did live poor in his last leg only to die rich, but for who & for what?
Wuod Baba did book her on Kenya Airways one way ticket to SA, when I encountered her. It was the late 90s, I worked in KQ’s Barclays Plaza Sales Office. She recited the story of her life. Butterflying her love for Masinde. She was returning to her country which had little connection, she hadn’t been there for decades, everyone she knew had passed on.
She had left SA in her 20s and now sunsetting her 60s. SA was a different kettle of fish and now an independent rainbow nation. She washed in sad thinking about her children. In 2010, out of the blue she would call me in bombshell spilling to me she had been paralysed, bedridden for 2 years, in a Catholic old age home in Durban, she soon be going to the Lord.
She requested I place a wreath of red roses on her husband’s Langata cemetery grave. Even though I didn’t know her well, I obliged.
With milk of kindness, she sent me USD 400 dollars for my gesture. I was tickled pink, but drunk all the money anyway, for it wetted in sad. Being the wages of Masinde’s sin, I couldn’t do much with it. I would never hear of Sibusiso again. I assume she’s dead.
Folks I have pondered about this woman’s life, and her hubby’s demise. To have a screw loose, both living in a house with an expansive compound in sunset when income is scarce as a hen’s teeth is suicidal. Shape up or ship out, an apartment makes logical sense.
To get a second wind, if Masinde had sold off his Karen home, & moved to an apartment in Westlands, he probably would have had enough money to buy at least 4 of them and wheelbarrow lots of rent and live in one yet sitting pretty. Agakhan hospital is close by Westlands, & it would have cushioned his sickness.
To have seen the elephant, his wife need not have walked 10 km for shopping as Sarit Shopping Mall is near. Sink or swim, Masinde would not be burdened with maintaining a squad of 4 servants. And you know what folks, the show must go on, he probably would be alive!
A senior moment for those teething 60 yrs and retiring, ponder this? Most of you have lost connect with your rural homes plus kith & kin. Your story probably ain’t any different from Masinde but characters changed. Do not lose yourself keeping up with the Joneses when money ain’t there. Throw out the baby and bath water, wake up call, downgrade and live a life.
School of hard knocks, no one today cares about you in your 60+ other than yourself, but saving grace for Masinde, his wife Sibusiso loved him, even if his children didn’t.
****Save your breathe don’t ask me if this is a true story, if you’re a busy body, I’ll sing it to y’all, it ain’t your business & I ain’t gonna reply.
****my book ‘I cleansed the tears is at Nuria bookshop”, however if you want a signed copy reach me @ 0733202108, and will courier it to you!
#okwirimy journal, my thoughts, my walk…
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