Corruption eats your children and always takes more than it gave

When I was seven, I woke up one morning, peeped through the window and saw a pickup truck filled with furniture packed outside the house.

My mother looked strangely pensive and when I asked why, she said, “Your father has lost his job.”

There was something in the manner she said it that explained that she knew, with that irritating woman’s sixth sense, that another job would not be forthcoming.

Cockroaches

She was right.

Many years later, when the pendulum of life had swung the family through hell and back, the old man chuckled one evening and said he although he didn’t have a coin to his name, he slept soundly every night.

“Have you ever seen government people in my home? They have no business here. I stole nothing. Even the cockroaches that I brought from Nairobi were mine,” he cracked.

Occasionally, I wonder how our lives would have been if he had pinched a couple of millions. He would have taken us to funky schools, piled our pockets with wads of pocket money, bought us expensive toys and bikes, took us to scenic places for holiday and spoilt us rotten.

And then one morning, the government would have come calling and we would all have been in dogs.

There is nothing as humiliating as when you’ve been swimming in illegally gotten wealth and then suddenly, someone rudely yanks the taps dry.

Because you are so accustomed to cash flowing in by the gunny bag, it takes you awhile to realise that the coffers are running dry. You sit there, living large, in the mistaken belief that a deal will fall through, that another Sh200 million will tossed into the backseat of your car by a shifty-eyed runner on a boda boda.

Saluted

It never does.

Meanwhile, the cars start decaying in the drive, the paint on your palace starts peeling and your wife starts growing shabby right before your eyes, and that is if she doesn’t run off with the next crook with a pile of dough in the bank.

A year later, someone disconnects your water and electricity, a bank comes knocking over three outstanding loans and before you can say National Youth Service, your corrupt backside is out in the cold, freezing through the hole in your trousers.

Yet a year earlier, you were the toast of town. People in government were calling as many as 40 times a day. Cops saluted when you passed by. Your favourite pub kept a special table for you and your three pampered mistress could have worshipped you had you so demanded.

Tunauza cash

Now when your phone rings, you cringe, wondering who, of the many people you owe cash, is looking for you. If you order a beer at your local, the barmaid extends her hand and, voice dripping with contempt, says, “Pombe tunauza cash.”

When you die 15 years later of a broken heart, your kids are too stoned to close your eyes. They only turn up to squabble over the little that remains of your once ‘vast estate’, before scurrying off back to into the depths of the land.

But that happens only if you are lucky. Most times, the government snores like an old dog while you stuff your pockets with ill-gotten wealth.

Then one fine morning, as happens to devil worshippers, a corrupt devil in government wakes up and decides to sacrifice someone.

So you are sitting there ignoring your wife after a spate of cold war when your imported dogs start barking. You peep out of the window and see ten Flying Squad officers strolling to your door.

If you are smart, head to the toilet because that might be the last time you will crap in peace.

What will follow is years of court appearances in which you stand in the dock looking embarrassed and miserable while your lawyer pretends to be extremely concerned about your welfare.

Depressed

Your ‘friends’ stop picking your calls. Your kids are shunned in school. Newspapers print your mugshot in the newspapers every morning and five months down the line, you are old, broke, depressed bag of bones suffering from every imaginable disease on earth.

But the worst thing about corruption is that the government often prosecutes the wrong guy.

Former Finance PS Dr Wilfred Koinange, who looked like a decent and honourable man, aged before our very eyes as the Goldenberg trial wound on for years.

Shortly before he died, looking broken and tired, he said he was now so broke he could not afford a lawyer. People who loot billions don’t get broke to the point where they can’t afford a lawyer.

In the meantime, the real suspect in the saga was travelling all over the world as an African elder, preaching in his church, running for MP and living his life without a care in the world.