By John Kariuki

Patel taught economics in Form Five and Six in a school in the Mt Kenya region. Every year around June, he would make his domestic financial estimates after the national budget had been presented in Parliament.

His budget would include allocations for the loaves of broad and bundles of sukuma wiki that would see his family through the fiscal year.

The ageing fellow loved quoting his ‘masterpiece’ financial estimates extensively to his classes. But as was normal in the early 1980s, the Government would come up with mini budgets and price hikes later in the year, throwing Patel’s estimates into disarray. And Patel would reserve some choice expletives, in what might have been Hindi or Gujarati, for the Finance Minister and stop all purchases in his house until he readjusted his budget.

Strangely, Patel was always in the same old pair of polyester trousers, ancient sandals and faded sweatshirt in the two years I knew him. But word had it that his son was enjoying a world class education abroad, a feat in those days!

While Patel had a methodology, motivation and possibly an intellectual justification for his stinginess, many old and pesky geeks horrify and amuse us by their miserly ways. Witness the many old geezers who have never put a day in the coffee or tea farm but take all the bonus payments to paint the town red with twilight girls leaving their families destitute. Others survive on rigorous shoestring budgets their entire adult lives only to die and leave millions of shillings in saving accounts. And there are occasionally gasps of incredulity when it transpires that some apparently well read men regularly count the pieces of meat before and after cooking in their houses and any difference in number forms the basis for protracted marital discord.

Rasta, a 22-year-old mechanic in Nakuru, remembers his father’s meanness as he was growing up.

"I was shocked the day I discovered that the old man regularly hid sugar and milk in his cupboard so that mom would not make tea without his approval. I must have been in Standard Five or Six," he says.

"I discussed my discovery with my friends in school the way children do. And confessions galore erupted," he recalls.

Rasta says that his neighbour at home, Naftali, an accountant now, revealed that their dad was even meaner. The man would regularly make a security impression with his hand on the wheat flour and store it away. The next time chapattis were to be cooked, he would first verify that the ‘hand print’ was undisturbed by placing his fingers on it and chuckle, happy that nobody had made pancakes or chapattis in his absence.

Fred Kago, a 35-year-old businessman in Nairobi, learnt early of his dad’s miserliness on account of his constant quarrels at home. "Everything was being misused as far as he was concerned!" he says.

His dad was always complaining of water left running in the taps, the lights being put on or off too early and too late respectively and such small things. "All of us children and our mother would account for every penny to our dad. He would expect you to work miracles with Sh100 from the questions he would ask. I think this is what drove me into business, to unravel the mysteries that he had built around money in my imagination," says Kago.

After he was hospitalised with a terminal condition, Kago and his siblings were horrified by the sheer junk that he had painstakingly stored in his antic room, previously a no-go zone. There were many past charity sweepstake tickets, proving that he had been a secret gambler. Also stashed away were his school report cards, receipts of all things bought in the house, a neat collection of all newspapers he had ever bought and dozens of novels and magazines he had read in his youth!

Betty Koskey, 34, a teacher in Eldoret, remembers her dad’s meanness. "He would interrogate us children in the evening to find out how many visitors had visited our home in his absence. And then he would begin quarrelling mom on how things like sugar and tea leaves were getting finished fast," She says.

This was despite the modest income the family made from maize and wheat farming.

"My father would always produce the exact money for the most urgent need at any moment. He would always complain that he had nothing extra left."

But one day the old man forgot his jacket outside and went away. As their mother was taking it into the house, she discovered that one side of it bulged at the seam. A small opening had been made and sewn with a thread. She took a razor blade, tore the sewing thread and peeped inside. "There was a huge bundle of bank notes stashed inside!" Susan recalls.

Of course, she pinched a few notes and sewed up the opening. She would repeat this game for a long time, secretly meeting the basic needs of her children!

Zephaniah Mwangangi remembers his father’s pesky and callous nature. Everything he owned, from a Sanyo prototype radio that had a wooden casing to his old Zephyr car was out of bounds to his children. At the harvest season his father would ‘count’ the maize cobs as they were being hauled into the granary. Before leaving for the office he would dip a ruler in the milk daily and note the depth to discourage them making tea in his absence.

Mwangangi says that at some point he and his siblings reasoned that the maize cobs were too many for their dad to count and keep an exact record of. They surmised that he only stood by the door of the granary mainly to pretend that he was taking count. So they began taking a little of the maize at a time, shelled it and sold it secretly. They would use the proceeds to buy essential personal items that their father considered non-essential luxuries like shaving machines and underwear.

When he asked why the mountain of the maize cobs appeared smaller in the granary, they would tell him it was due to their drying after harvesting. The milk was even easier to use in his absence. "We would take a cup of it for making tea and add a cup of water to return it to its original volume," he laughs.

Mwangangi now uses this heartless and deceitful aspect of human nature profitably as a writer. "As a script writer for several schools especially during the annual drama season, my plays often go places, thanks to the many dramatic and treacherous twists I put in them," he says. "I thank God that I was able to see the nasty things in my dad so that I do not repeat them." he says.

But Dismus Kaingu, a sociologist in his 30s, does not think many modern people have learnt any lessons from their older relatives. He notes that many contemporary people routinely hide the remote control gadgets of their television sets and put codes on their pay TV decoders so that nobody can watch movies in their absence.

"I know of people who even go to work with their mains electricity fuses in their pockets and power only ‘returns’ when they are back at home. This control is as nasty to our children as our forefathers’ habit of hoarding food items like eggs, meat and wheat flour was to us," he says.

He says that, overall, the world has become richer and every new generation has its treasured symbols of control. "There isn’t much power now in controlling food items, but we certainly annoy our children and perhaps look outdated by limiting their access to technology — the hottest thing now," says Kaingu. "Modern people have a near paranoid restriction on who accesses their mobile phones, the Internet, cars, credit cards and so on."

But even with Kaingu’s sociological insight into the mean minds of some people, it would be hard to put one Naivasha man’s strange habit in any perspective.

According to neighbours’ accounts, this ageing man is jealous of his young and pretty wife to a fault. He is believed to have walked out on his family upon receipt of his pension and moved in with his current lover. But every time she goes out, say to the shop or market, he has to verify that she has not strayed. When she comes back, he orders her to climb atop a stool or a table. And with a powerful torch and a studious and wizened face he performs a meticulous examination.