PAY DAY

For anybody in gainful employment there’s no time to look forward to than the end month. Forget about this contracts that pay in a fortnight or weekly. The only way you know you are in lucrative employment when you get excited around end month time. This is the time all your sacrifices of waking up in the morning when all you want to do is sleep is rewarded. This is the time those who don’t enjoy their works for once shed off their phony smiles meant to score points with the men whom depending on their moods dictate how much you take home every month. 

You’ll know it is payday when suddenly there’s an influx of people in all the places that shout new money. These include the supermarkets and shopping malls of the city. And I’m not talking about people just passing by to window-shop, haggle about prices of electronics in a supermarket and pick PK worth twenty bob on their way out. I’m not talking about people who think Nevada is charging them too much for a 500ml bottle of soda and decide to dash in and buy a pet bottle of soda at 55 shillings. 

On pay day it is evident-a minimum of a fully packed trolleys laden with all the good things za kuambia mwili ahsante. On pay day those who partake of the bitter stuff in the pubs on the dingy alleys of Nairobi rise to the occasion and migrate uptown, indulge in the excesses of the night, leave behind ‘hefty’ tips of 200 shillings for waiters with Vera Sidika’s back and momentarily forget that they are otherwise responsible members of the society.

Pay Day is most celebrated by teachers. I know because I was a teacher in my other life. Forget all that crap about teaching being a calling. It aint. Unless by calling here you mean it’s a calling from JAB. Let’s face it; those good teachers that moulded us into who we are are long gone. The ones singing bado mapambano in the streets every three months are not motivated by an inner calling in them, a passion to serve humanity or things like that. They are motivated by the huge grin on pay day. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with loving money, I’m helplessly in love with cash too.

Queue at ATM on pay day

I remember my first salary. There’s an exhilarated feeling about the money you sweat for. It’s sweet. It’s adorable. Never mind how meager it is. I used to be a teacher at St Isabel Mixed Secondary school those days that the good University Joint Admissions Board insisted you had to rest home for two years before entering the hallowed gates of an institution of higher learning to do a course that they thought was best for you. The school manager/owner/head teacher/master on duty/head boy was a hairy old man who was himself a senior educational official in the village before retiring and starting his own school. The school had a teaching staff of four when I got in to a student population of about 200.

I was to teach English and History from form one to four. I was just glad to be out of the house and in productive employment. You know how it is after you clear form four and you have absolutely no reason to ask for pocket money. Wenger, the manager was a busy man. He was called Wenger due to same uncanny similar characteristics with one Arsene Wenger. He was rarely in school. He had a flourishing transport company of about twenty pikipikis, a chemist shop that was the envy of the town, a kindergarten for the town’s elite, a dairy farm that supplied milk to many establishments in town among very many other profitable ventures. In this hierarchy it was the school that brought in least profits. 

I guess that’s why he was rarely in the school. I think he just kept it a float in the loving memory of Isabel his deceased mother.

The work of running the school fell to a certain E B Siwo, a trained teacher himself too. He taught Kiswahili though it was obvious it was not his natural tongue. This was a guy who loved his bottle. The school was situated at the very foot of Wire Mountains in Oyugis Town. The close proximity to the woods gave the man the necessary camouflage to go and take a little at break time and lunch time and come back quiet into the staffroom like a sick man. With that it was obvious he couldn’t take his afternoon Kiswahili classes.

Being new and enthusiastic, I offered to teach Kiswahili Fasihi and even later Insha in addition to my other subjects. The good Siwo thus taught just Kiswahili Grammar whenever he was not sick or inebriated or absent. The feeling of authority, of students looking up to you, of asking a big bearded boy to stand up and sit down as instructed was euphoric. See I was never a prefect in my other life. From form one I was a mopper on duty. That was synonymous with slavery in Maseno School. You had no power, absolutely no power. You were not to talk unless talked to and of course the inspectors, who were themselves students (mere form twos for that matter), owned your ass. Not literally I must add.

I loved my job. Being a teacher felt like a calling. I woke up earliest from home and was usually the first member of staff to arrive. I would, just like my teachers did in high school squeeze every time for my three subjects. I rarely used my chair in the staffroom coz I preferred standing, using my well kept high school notes to impart knowledge upon willing heads. I read and reread the new English and Swahili set books, I analyzed them just like my teachers taught me to and on a silver platter fed it to them. I don’t remember a time when my hands were not covered in chalk dust……………. Until pay day!

No member of staff was ever excited to see Wenger because it meant more work. But on pay day it was just about the cash, deserved reward on a loyal laborer. Wenger the busy man was of course itching to get away to his more profitable ventures.

“Mwalimu Robert, come in here” he called me.

I was bubbling with excitement. I wasn’t sure what to do with my first pay. My mother had reminded me that my first salary was to give out to close relatives to bless my future earnings. Of course 10% was God’s and that was non negotiable. You never say no to that woman. So in my head I had already committed half my salary to such ventures. The other fifty percent I wasn’t sure. It was increasingly getting difficult picking up ladies with the Vodafone 125 my father had gotten me from his 4500 Bonga points. It had no memory card slot and of course I couldn’t listen to music loudly for girls to notice or put ‘I’m bawling’ song as my ringing tone.

On the other hand, teachers are respectable people in the society and a suit was trademark for men of such stature in the society.

The phone or the suit….

The phone or the suit……….. The phone or the suit………..

He begun by appreciating my enthusiasm and the fresh energy I was stirring in the students. He went ahead by saying it would be a shame if such dedication and enthusiasm were not to be rewarded. At this moment I was accepting the accolades with a cool demeanor just like a Don receiving compliments from a loyal subject. Of course one cannot eat compliments.

“However, you’ve noticed that this term most of these students have not been paying fees……..”

Here is when I really begun paying attention.

To cut a long story short he paid me two thousand shillings. Yes, two thousand shillings!

I owed the school mama mandazi three hundred shillings from a month of taking mandazis and uji at break time. You should know fuel is compulsory bwana. And of course I still had to get those blessings by giving my grandmother two hundred shillings and buying my aunt Nyasembo fulu. For those who don’t understand French, Fulu are bigger omenas. Too bad we buried Nyasembo over the weekend. Such a great woman.

So the next day, gutted, disappointed and seething in anger I decided teaching was not my calling after all. My mother of course couldn’t understand why I was quitting. In her usual stinging sarcasm she asked me to go out in the streets and show her where one could just walk and pick two thousand shillings.

My fate was sealed. 

The next day I reported to school at ten, in a matching trouser and coat that could easily pass as a suit and sat in my staffroom chair, drunk the sugarless office tea, reading the sports news on the paper and of course the classifieds. 

Waiting for Pay Day; for the big grin; for things to get better

It did …....Eventually, when I was promoted to the school principal and could finally buy a Nokia E series to depict my new status. It was a Chinese model of course; with two SIM cards, volume louder than an woofer, EDGE internet, memory card slot to play all my songs and with a calendar to mark the next Pay Day!

Too bad JAB had other ideas and summoned me to do Public Health when the big bucks had just started rolling….

Any Principal Job opening out there?

Mzee Varaq’s Journey

So yesterday was my birthday. I’m not usually a sentimental man but even men made of stones are allowed to relish some moments once in a while. The point about  birthdays is that they remind you that you growing old and therefore provides you with an opportunity to access where you are, where you want to go, how far you are from there and of course what you need to get there. I know I’ve always maintained that life isn’t that serious but I guess growing old does that to a person.

There are very many ways you just know you are growing up. Of course the surest way of knowing is when you give rise to a new generation of young Kenyans. When you are no longer just Varaq but Mzee Varaq baba ya Petition Mutunga Varaq. I’m not saying that an infant with such a name exists but I’m also not denying. My brothers the Alpha Male, The Legend and Matolo have also done something and being a multiple uncle means that our stories for the next generation are guaranteed. In the words of Japheth my class rep, ’we are going on vere well’.

me

Everybody has a story. Everybody has a journey. A story of where they are from, a story of where they are going. I have my story. I have tasted success, I have licked losses, I have gurgled despair, but I’ve never doubted that I’ll get there. No, it’s not course of any proof or assurance but because of the unflinching faith of a mother and the unwavering confidence poured on a son by a proud father.

big bro n dad

I know am getting old because the basic 8.4.4 system of education is soon behind me and my baby sister who is half a decade younger is in university herself. Her generation is that you can’t sustain a conversation with via text. They have all those xaxa, xema, piwa , ttyl and YOLO things that just make you feel really really archaic. You know it’s time to quit campus when in document verification before a hockey match you look at some of your teammates who are born 96 and you wonder whether the problem is with your  mother for making you start school late.

Finishing school however means that one has to start being creative, to start knowing how to survive in this Nairobi when the taps of parental charity runs out, when you cease to be a responsibility but a bother. For that reason, I pray I get a job soon. I know the focus these days should be from job seeking to job creation but I’m soon realizing that not everybody is cut out for that entrepreneurial thing. I know in my twitter bio I may have indicated that am an entrepreneur but I’m soon beginning to realize that maybe entrepreneurship is rocket science after all. There is a difference between selling wares to get by and managing a business scientifically to get to the desired results. Yesterday during a mentorship session, a Linda Wamalwa, MD at LightBox opened my eyes to that truth. I’m not of course saying I’m in any hurry to edit my twitter bio. 

So I’m a job seeker. This time is for real. I remember in second and third years when I was looking for opportunities for my practicum attachments I did send letters, tones of letters….no they were GBs coz they were in soft copy. Ok, I’m exaggerating, maybe thousands of kilobytes of letters to prospective employers who were either too busy to reply an email or who had firewall settings that made sure the messages sent to those email address failed permanently. There were analogue once too who believed you had to queue for their attention like refugees being served food at Kakuma Refugee Camp. Thinking about it we were really waiting for food, only that it didn’t come. But I don’t blame them; they didn’t know what they were missing. The point is we never despaired and that’s why right now looking for a job is my full time job, a job that I’m ready to embark on with all gusto.

So the other day I was applying for this job that apart from all the other education requirements had certain provisions that just left me wondering how job seeking has evolved into such a rigorous process of thinning. They had this provision that required me to describe my Christian journey. Why couldn’t they just ask me about my academic journey? Then I would just have indicated Maseno School and that would have sufficed. Not that there’s anything hard in jotting my Christian journey after all I’m a Christian. I can see a stupid smile playing on your lips. Wipe it away. You know I’m a son to a Deaconess. 

The issue was the description was to be in 3000 words. I know I’m a writer, a creative writer for that sake but surely what would one write on a religious journey for all those words? Of course I can talk about my baptism all those years ago in River Awach, and my first holy communion and even if I were to list all those Saturdays that I have gone to church that wouldn’t take even two hundred words. But since I’m broke, desperate and most of all idle, all take my time writing my Christian journey. I will write about my adventurers as an adventurer and a pathfinder. I will of course not exclude that my motivation for going out on all those camps was not the calling of Christ but the calling of the hormones. I hope the guy above  will understand.

So that Christian journey thing got me thinking. What if they asked for my romantic journey? At this rate I won’t be surprised if interviewing panels started asking for one’s opinion on gayism and lesbianism, on polygamy, on the ICC and all those questions where either answer is wrong or insensitive; immoral or conservative; progressive or radical. For my romantic journey I would request for not just 3000 words, but maybe a whole ten seasons just like Ted Mosby, he of How I Met Your Mother Fame. I still remember my first girlfriend. She used to be a girl in my class in primary. She was a true beauty, a natural Kenyan leader; corrupt, greedy, drunk in power, selfish and surrounded with a clique as vicious as the Mount Kenya mafia.

It doesn’t matter who was making noise in class that day, she always had a noise makers list which for obvious reasons never had my name. Those who required such exemptions had to part with some goodwill gifts such as sugarcane, scones at break time and of course the pinnacle of the gifts was akuon akuon. Now akuon akuon were mandazis that were made using unga ngano and maize flour in the ratio of 1:100. That didn’t take away any sweetness from them. For a shilling people jostling to be close to the seat of Zee’s power would buy ten akuon akuons. You just have to remember to show your undying loyalty. Of course I didn’t have to struggle much; my love that rained like the El Nino was enough to ensure that I was able to milk, milk and milk some more. Not that milking bwana, back then I knew that thing was merely for passing water. That was Zee for you, my leader girl. She moved to another town and that great love story had to adjourn. Maybe just like in those Philippine movies we will bump into each other in the streets of Migingo, reconnect emotionally and live happily thereafter.

I still remember my first kiss, it wasn’t from Zee; it was from Jacy. I was so crazy about this girl that we merged our names. She was JacyRobz and I was RobzJacy. She was mine and I was hers. We had our own language, complete with alphabet and all. We just reversed the alphabet from Z-A  and matched them with their corresponding letters. Not that I expect you to understand anyway. It was that crypted. ‘O nswaki’ used to mean I love you and ‘jali ki o’ used to mean I miss you. Mathematical terms were also infused in our language. LCM didn’t mean Least Common Multiple but Love, Cherish and Miss. We used to write each other sweet endearing letters that nobody could understand……until my meddling big sister Aluoch broke the code. She threatened to expose my crafty nature to my trigger happy mother. Now my mother is no joke. She is the kind of woman who would cane you thoroughly and still beat you some more for crying yet all she had done was to slightly hit you. It doesn’t matter how painful the canes were, you just had to stop crying lest she starts the ‘real’ beating.

Of course I had to come up with a way of bribing her lest she reports me to the Idi Amin of a mother. So for six months I gave her all my meat whenever we ate beef until she made a bigger mistake and it was payback time! Naturally I took full advantage. Anyway back to Jacy and my first kiss. I know that’s what you guys want to hear.

In our culture once you are a big boy you start ‘chasing sleep’. Chasing sleep means that you no longer sleep under the same roof with your parents. So at night alone with no prying eyes Jacy and I used to discuss LCM before discussing the other LCM. Once again hold your horses; nothing happened apart from the kiss. There were all this adverts about how a real guy waits and of course Mzee Varaq wanted to show his lady love that he was a real man. Too bad not everybody wanted to be a real man and that was my first heartbreak. The thing about heartbreaks is that you don’t see it coming until like a thunderbolt it hits you and leaves you for the dead. It makes you however stronger and wiser. That real man thing was not to be experimented with again. I guess that’s why I have zero faith in adverts apart from the Guinness ones of course.

I told you I could really write about my love journey. That would just be my introduction. I’ve met all kinds of girls, crazy, sweet, innocent, dangerous, vengeful, caring, considerate, naïve, experienced …..I mean all kinds. But each has impacted my life in a different way, each has made me a better man, each has made me learn something about myself, about women. I know I’ll never be an expert on women coz they are complex creatures, even more complex than Algebra to a standard one pupil but so long as life moves on I’ll learn.

Happy birthday to myself; Long Live Mzee Varaq