Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Cousin, biro.

I heard that guys tend to do a little light dusting when thy think that are about to bring home some mama for a little horizontal bonding. Somehow, though, that dusting tends to miss obvious corners that the mama will definitely stumble into: bathrooms that have never seen the caustic end of Vim; kitchen shelves that harbour billions of roach-y eggs; seat cushions that have never had the benefit of a vacuum cleaner - or sunlight. Nairobi is quite a lot like those guys I heard about.

In July, our famous cousin from America will come to visit. We've known he was coming since hata sijui. But the City Fathers surely must have thought to themselves, We gonna get laid tonight! because the kind of light dusting they are engaged in better not get ruined by a "light shower" or our cousin's massive Caddy will also need a snorkel.

I've seen the Big Daddy of the City Fathers hanging out a lot at Pumwani Maternity and I've always wondered whether the man is blind. He might be short-sighted; doesn't he wears spectacles? Anyway, he was there a few weeks ago - he tweeted about it on May 26 - delivering equipment of one sort or another. I wondered if he had seen the massive mound of garbage outside the Doctors' Quarters. Or whether his fellow City Fathers and the City Fathers' mouthpiece ever saw the mound of garbage. I don't think they did because it is still there and now it seems that there is someone living next to the mound of garbage.

Maybe our cousin will not depart too much from this side of Moi Avenue and he won't get to see Eastleigh's First Avenue or Munaina Street. Maybe he'll be a gracious cousin and keep himself to an itinerary that won't stray one inch over the white lines of Moi Avenue. Because by my reckoning the City Fathers are going to pour a few millions into flowers on Uhuru Highway and temporary paint for the road. They are definitely not going to remove the massive mound of garbage outside the Doctors' Quarters at Pumwani Maternity Hospital.

In fact if our cousin's security people decide to confound the bad guys by taking Lusaka Road to Landhies Road to Haile Selassie Avenue to Moi Avenue to Harambee Avenue to Parliament Road and then into the Intercontinental, I don't know what the City Fathers will do. That route is remarkable for the number of blocked sewers, overflowing drains and invisible pedestrian footpaths. Pedestrians are forced to walk in traffic, dodging boda bodas, mikokoteni, matatus and effluent of unknown origin. The City Fathers definitely don't want our cousin to see that. They'd better deploy those ridiculous drums of theirs across Lusaka Road to ensure our cousin and The Beast stick to Uhuru Highway.

What is it about smart people that allows them to act like complete morons anyway? Sure we want the American President to feel respected and welcome, but this tone-deaf stupidity about the Nairobi sanitation, drainage and sewerage system beggars belief. It is this kind of stupidity that drives Nairobians to drink. If NACADA wanted to reduce the degree of substance dependence in this City, it should investigate and find solutions to the stupidity that seems to afflict the City Fathers.

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