Campus Life; Good Boy Gone Bad: Episode 22…… Proof!

I am seated in a cafeteria in the town centre, taking my morning tea. It is one of those places in the countryside that doubles up as a tourist attraction with curios: baskets, wood and soapstone carvings, fly whisks, maasai beads and other paraphernalia of the type that excites tourists, and a tea kiosk, serving mahamri, chai rangi, chapatti na mbaazi, boiled maize etc. Simple fare designed for people with lean pockets like yours truly. It is 11 am on a Wednesday morning, and I am surrounded by civil servants who have come in for their mid morning tea, bland looking individuals in open necked shirts and neutral coloured trousers and skirts, who look more like a group of high school students rather than specialists who draw up budgets, design roads, advise farmers on how to grow the latest hybrid of drought resistant sweet potato etc. I am nursing my chai rangi with tangawizi. I ordered a cob of boiled maize and a boiled egg to be served along with the tea, a strange combination, I know, but you never know what kind of cravings will hit you when you skip breakfast in order to make it in time for your appointment with a client who is 40 km away from your office and you are forced to have your breakfast in out of the way places in faraway towns. As I sit here, sipping on my tepid cup of tea, I am thinking about how I would kill for a large, frothy cappuccino from my favourite coffee house in Nairobi, accompanied by a grilled cheese and turkey sub and Death by Chocolate cake for dessert (oh joy!). You see, I work in Kwale district, as a salesperson for a large company in Nairobi that is expanding its operations into the interior parts of the country. Our organizations motto runs something like this ‘to reach the previously unreached members of the rural population’, or if you prefer it in star trek speak; ‘to boldly go where no city born and bred girl has gone before’. For those of you who are wondering where Kwale town is, I will tell you. Simply put, you go to Nairobi’s Accra road and book a bus to Mombasa, travel the 486 kilometres to Mwembe Tayari stage, drop off and board a tuk tuk to the ferry, make the white knuckled trip across the channel, take a matatu and travel the 10 kilometres past Likoni, Denyenye, Ng'ombeni, and Waa, turn right at Kombani junction and cover the final 25 km to Kwale town. By now, you are probably asking yourself how on earth a did a dyed in the wool city girl like me, raised in that part of the city known as DC (Dagoretti Corner), but now referred to as ‘Ngong Road’ by the yuppies in entry level jobs who live in our parents’ servants quarters while we get sent off to make our own way in the furthest corners of the country, how did I end up so far from Nairobbery? The truth is, it wasn’t  due to any one thing, but rather a combination of factors; folly of youth, and the misfortune of being a fresh graduate in a third world country, under an oppressive regime, during the time of a global recession when jobs are so hard to come by and people are getting laid off in their thousands. As a youngster who had been out of work for a year after graduating college, when asked by a potential employer how flexible I was and was I willing to be posted to work in any part of the country, I elatedly answered that I would willingly go ‘wither thou sendest me’ or some other such foolish comment. That, in a nutshell, is how I found myself 500 kilometres away from the skyscrapers of the city in the sun. This, by the way, ought to serve as a warning to young people, if a prospective employer asks you how ‘flexible’ you are, you might want to ask for a little more clarification before you sign on the dotted line and find yourself in Suguta Mar Mar, the hottest place in Kenya the beautiful, where temperatures can reach as high as 45 degrees centigrade and banditry is the order of the day. But, like I said, I was young, and I needed the money; cat food and designer shoes do not grow on trees, and sometimes you have to start out in the trenches before you hit the big time.

THE END©

I am seated in a cafeteria in the town centre, taking my morning tea. It is one of those places in the countryside that doubles up as a tourist attraction with curios: baskets, wood and soapstone carvings, fly whisks, maasai beads and other paraphernalia of the type that excites tourists, and a tea kiosk, serving mahamri, chai rangi, chapatti na mbaazi, boiled maize etc. Simple fare designed for people with lean pockets like yours truly. It is 11 am on a Wednesday morning, and I am surrounded by civil servants who have come in for their mid morning tea, bland looking individuals in open necked shirts and neutral coloured trousers and skirts, who look more like a group of high school students rather than specialists who draw up budgets, design roads, advise farmers on how to grow the latest hybrid of drought resistant sweet potato etc. I am nursing my chai rangi with tangawizi. I ordered a cob of boiled maize and a boiled egg to be served along with the tea, a strange combination, I know, but you never know what kind of cravings will hit you when you skip breakfast in order to make it in time for your appointment with a client who is 40 km away from your office and you are forced to have your breakfast in out of the way places in faraway towns. As I sit here, sipping on my tepid cup of tea, I am thinking about how I would kill for a large, frothy cappuccino from my favourite coffee house in Nairobi, accompanied by a grilled cheese and turkey sub and Death by Chocolate cake for dessert (oh joy!).

You see, I work in Kwale district, as a salesperson for a large company in Nairobi that is expanding its operations into the interior parts of the country. Our organizations motto runs something like this ‘to reach the previously unreached members of the rural population’, or if you prefer it in star trek speak; ‘to boldly go where no city born and bred girl has gone before’. For those of you who are wondering where Kwale town is, I will tell you. Simply put, you go to Nairobi’s Accra road and book a bus to Mombasa, travel the 486 kilometres to Mwembe Tayari stage, drop off and board a tuk tuk to the ferry, make the white knuckled trip across the channel, take a matatu and travel the 10 kilometres past Likoni, Denyenye, Ng'ombeni, and Waa, turn right at Kombani junction and cover the final 25 km to Kwale town. By now, you are probably asking yourself how on earth a did a dyed in the wool city girl like me, raised in that part of the city known as DC (Dagoretti Corner), but now referred to as ‘Ngong Road’ by the yuppies in entry level jobs who live in our parents’ servants quarters while we get sent off to make our own way in the furthest corners of the country, how did I end up so far from Nairobbery? The truth is, it wasn’t  due to any one thing, but rather a combination of factors; folly of youth, and the misfortune of being a fresh graduate in a third world country, under an oppressive regime, during the time of a global recession when jobs are so hard to come by and people are getting laid off in their thousands. As a youngster who had been out of work for a year after graduating college, when asked by a potential employer how flexible I was and was I willing to be posted to work in any part of the country, I elatedly answered that I would willingly go ‘wither thou sendest me’ or some other such foolish comment. That, in a nutshell, is how I found myself 500 kilometres away from the skyscrapers of the city in the sun. This, by the way, ought to serve as a warning to young people, if a prospective employer asks you how ‘flexible’ you are, you might want to ask for a little more clarification before you sign on the dotted line and find yourself in Suguta Mar Mar, the hottest place in Kenya the beautiful, where temperatures can reach as high as 45 degrees centigrade and banditry is the order of the day. But, like I said, I was young, and I needed the money; cat food and designer shoes do not grow on trees, and sometimes you have to start out in the trenches before you hit the big time.