Good Morning
There is no shortage of wake up calls in apartment blocks.
An overly enthusiastic school bus driver gone to town on the horn and
accelerator at the gate, a maid loudly trading morning tidings with security
guards, a construction foreman gifted with ability to shout half of Kileleshwa
awake and cocks crowing from crowded balconies. Like the spoilt brats they are,
the middle class must be rudely roused from lazy slumber.
Infrastructure is a Luxury
There is a circus in town in the way of upgrades to
infrastructure like roads and electricity poles. One would make ends meet on
wagers based on which road sections will be closed, which part of the bypass we
shall find mysteriously completed, how long it will take to wade through
lethargic traffic jams at 7.30am and how long the fifth blackout in three
hours will last. Still this is welcome relief from the Chinese foreman bellowing orders
from an incomplete balcony directly opposite your bedroom window.
Enter the Thought Police
The administrative assistant (messenger a generation ago)
expertly navigates narrow corridors and even narrower cubicles to your desk.
They take a minute to catch their breath before asking for the day’s
deliveries, and revealing to you that new poll results have been released. In
fact the results are all over the newspapers. There is a twist to the results
this time, the leading candidates are tied so a run off is inevitable. You
gently remind the administrative assistant that the polling results are based
on hardly one thousand participants and that approximately twelve million Kenyans are
registered voters but what do you know? I mean the middle class are so
dismissive.
Get a 'real' Job
It didn’t take long for anticipated, almost childish
confrontation to rear its expected head. The resident IT manager is convinced
that there just isn’t a market for video streaming applications which target smartphones and
tablet PCs in Kenya. Your mind however has drifted as you try to understand how
a corporation with multiple and varying IT needs from software, to security,
hardware, training and so on, can have an IT manager. He must be a jack of all
trades – amazing! His dismissive attitude and chest thumping, hardly allowing
you time to articulate and justify your product, would annoy any sane
entrepreneur seeking to change their lot, but disappointment, dismissal, cartels
and demands for unspoken yet now official favors is something the spoilt, lazy
middle class must learn to live with.
Trade Flesh or Perish
The boss was none too pleased when you badged in, the
personal assistant half running, half balancing on skyscrapers called high
heels (perhaps because one must be high to consider them foot wear), definitely
scuttling and obviously raging mad catches up with you at the doorway. You need
to leave early as your son’s asthma attack is bad this time … well according to
the house help. The apartment block’s management also called to let you know
the electricity people mysteriously showed up and declared your bill to be
fifteen thousand shillings. You try to recall the last time you received an
electricity bill, but your mind shifts back to your son. Ordinarily you’d ask
your husband to handle the situation but he is presenting his video streaming mobile
application demo to a leading telephony provider. He thinks this will be his big break, in
fact you prayed in the morning. Your phone rings it’s the house help again and
you plead with the boss promising to come in on Saturday. As you hurry down the
flight of stairs from your seventeenth floor office, dodging the ‘elevator
under repairs’ sign you recall a time when your boss was friendly, pointed you
out as a rising star at the office parties, invited you to dinners and retreats for
‘strategic meetings’ – but that was before you got married.
The Middle Class be Damned!
I love the quote which goes, “you don’t have to finish eating
an egg to know that it is rotten.” Any two digit IQ Kenyan now gets the gist of
the above. I call it an Ode to the Middle Class. It would have gotten exciting
had I talked about the journey home after 7pm and how we dodge car-jackings and
muggings (mostly through prayer), but I’d hate to be the drool, spoilt, lazy
middle class softie. I mean according to a certain media house the rich (must)
also cry. Therefore on behalf of the middle class please allow me to apologize
for being such a disgusting human being. I do not scuffle at polling stations
for the primaries, perhaps because I know that the preferred candidates will
sail through despite our so called right to vote. In fact I actually wait for people INSIDE the elevator to exit before I enter - I mean who does that right? I
apologize for taking my family and what you call a Poodle but is actually a Dachshund to Koroga, how inconsiderate and snobbish
of me. Appreciating and promoting local talent, seeking to spend a nice Sunday
afternoon with friends and family, joining fellow Kenyans in contributing some
much needed positive energy to the country; Christ above the middle class be
damned!
He was on Churchill
You will also forgive me for trying to gift my children with
standards, working my fingers to the bone for quality education, spurring them
to seek a better life and demanding they behave like civilized human beings at
all times. I apologize for blocking the red plate Toyota Prado as it overlapped
and tried to cut it at the junction I’d been crawling towards for forty
minutes. How dare I stand up to inconsiderate human beings bursting at the
seams with empty pride and delusions of humanity profiting off the pain, poverty and misery of others, masquerading as not for profits. I apologize to the Man of God
who so tenderly and lovingly judged us all and put us in our place. Alas
ashamed and sinful we stand rebuked, ready to have you place your hands on us
and point out the speck in our collective eye. We must continue to plant
financial seeds and tithe diligently in support of such self-proclaimed
captains of society.
The Hype is actually so Simple
I cannot apologize enough as my every breath is more
repulsive than the last. Woe unto me the slothful and covetous middle class
animal that I am. However allow me to quickly and humbly make a case for myself.
It’s simple really you see I choose to believe in a better Kenya where using
hand sanitizer is not morally illegal and people respect each other. I choose
to stand up to the societal vampires holding us hostage and seeking to polarize
and agitate us via propaganda masked as news and outdated tricks like polls, by
standing guard as an information minuteman and sharing open, unbiased dialogue
with my fellow Kenyans. I choose to believe in a culture bent on empowerment for
and provision of equal opportunities to all Kenyans irrespective of race, tribe
and creed. I refuse to be a spectator voter supporting ethnic alliances,
sheepishly smiling at the brewing storm, and allowing myself to view my Kenyan
brother and sister as my enemy. Therefore I refuse to fall prey to the oldest
trick in the book of the deceiver. I shall not be divided against my Kenyan
brethren for that way I cannot be conquered.
Find a new Scape Goat
I am personally tired of the constant lambasting of the so called middle class which is totally undefined by the way, whom every 'blogger' and media house employee with unresolved issues now attacks and blames for everything including cold coffee and flooded roads. Any show of civility in Kenya is now mocked and fought as a middle class trait, so much so that I sometimes fear we are descending into Chairman Mao's China preparing to rid ourselves of any and all who dare use their brain and live in a civilized world. Listen, you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Blaming each and all and waiting for those whom you voted for and somehow deem indebted to you to change Kenya, is as foolish as the dog which barks at storm clouds in a bid to avert the rain. We can clean up our drainage systems, stop littering, secure our neighborhoods and weed out the sociopaths hiding in crevices like media, leadership, schools and churches. Hey, that or back to living like a robot off your 4inch screen reality catching up with some socialite's latest nude photos as your 7 year old takes twerking classes off the iPad you bought to impress your work mates.
Hear hear!!
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