Henry Munene takes a swipe at young inheritors who sell and blow family fortunes overnight

Nairobi is full of men and women with dramatic ‘swagger’ who drive top-of-the-range SUVs, wear the most expensive colognes and live at addresses that transport the mind to a land overflowing with easy money.

These mostly young and upwardly mobile people are not in most cases as rich as they appear. The designer clothes they wear do a poor job of masking the fact that most of them are forever mired in debt, which they keep rolling over from one creditor to the next to sustain their lavish and rich lifestyles.

This they do until it all goes bust and you don’t see them anymore, except at the auctioneers and shylocks, this time evading the limelight.

Truth is, even as young people complain that the generations of their fathers are too selfish to let them inherit wealth, many of these juveniles cannot do anything useful with family money if alcohol spares them long enough to inherit it.

That is why the so-called celebville in Nairobi is scattered with people who blew their inheritance on alcohol, club life and other showy sideshows. They rarely go home because their siblings are baying for their blood for squandering the family fortunes.

Others, who are born hustlers, keep the celeb gossip tongues wagging about how well off they are, yet they do not have a dime to their names.

They will buy one or two expensive suits, which they wear to all notable events to make sure the façade passes for their true lifestyles.

However, the Nairobi swagger is nothing compared to the weeklong show put up by village ‘millionaires’ when they miraculously come into money by offloading family fortunes.

Unlike in the city where a spoilt brat can use his connections to get tenders to supply air and make quick money, or latch onto election campaign money when the family windfall is gone, in the village, it’s tougher being an overnight millionaire or sustaining the facade.

One has to sell a piece of land the moment he acquires a title deed to his ancestral land and the journey to instant wealth is as quick as the return to permanent poverty.

Still, the sudden infusion of hard cash into village economy is often so sudden that it causes inflation and brings the sleepy hamlet to a standstill.
  
Bodyguards
It is not uncommon to see someone who has sold a piece of land — and received some cash deposit — walking into a bar flanked by all the dreaded village ruffians acting as body guards. These ruffians are no Secret Service men though. They will guard the ‘boss’ for drinks during the day but attack and steal all his money when darkness falls.

Unlike in the city where overnight millionaires even hire helicopters to impress crowds, in the village, you see many outriders on Chinese motorcycles leading a convoy to the shopping centre. Then comes a Probox, normally for transporting miraa from the village to Nairobi, but today it is carrying the ‘boss’ back left.

The Probox will mostly be followed by a battered escort car full of hangers-on now fashioned as ‘fans’ of the boss.
Behind the escort car comes more motorcycles, many of them honking like mad or playing loud reggae music, all snaking into town in a style city people only dream of.

Once seated at the local bar, the hangers-on know how to keep the beer flowing by keeping our overnight millionaire forever flattered.

“Mheshimiwa,” someone will shout, “you know, even when we were classmates in school, I could tell you would one day become very rich. Remember you used to take the first position all the time yet you rarely held a book to read,” one says.
Never mind that the person speaking never stepped inside a classroom.

On hearing this, the so-called mheshimiwa buys another round for everyone. Now, in some local pubs, there is normally a bell at the counter, which, instead of shouting at the waiter, you ring and all present are served a beer on your account. Our overnight millionaire, being a wise man of few words, will keep walking from his seat to the bell.

Woe unto you if you are a teacher or an employee of the government or private factory and you happen to be in that bar.
You will be ridiculed by the overnight millionaire’s party for having worked for many years yet you can’t afford one round for the crowd. This further flatters the ‘boss’ and keeps the beer flowing.

Brokers
In such times, fights among boss’ fans keep erupting over who should control the boss’ bill and who should decide who gets another beer and who does not. The brokers, the drivers and the security team keep fighting over the ‘boss’, all of them extolling his virtues and doing a pained analysis on how miraculous it is that new counties have been created under the new Constitution because they would all vote for him.

‘CDF’ slippers
One man will stand up and say, “The reason we like you mheshimiwa is that you do not show off. We know you have a lot of money yet you wear worn-out ‘CDF’ slippers and patched clothes because you are a humble man — a man of the people. Not many people can actually tell that you are easily the richest man in our county right now.

“And you do not even take loans like the employed people with degrees who come here and cannot mix with people like us because we never went to school,” he adds,   causing laughter directed towards the civil servants and teachers present.

After beer has flown for some time, another fan stands up and, employing a very wise saying from his community, announces something to the effect that a human body is not made of wood, but of real food — especially meat. It is at that point that the local butcher is frog-marched to the boss’ table and ordered to ignore what he has in his butchery and slaughter a whole goat for ‘mheshimiwa’s campaign team’, for that is what it has become by this point.

And just when the butcher has washed everyone’s hands and they are beginning to dig into the goat meat, it is not uncommon to hear a shrill war cry at the door of the bar. Everyone pauses and turns to stare at a disheveled woman carrying a child on her back with three hungr y-looking toddlers in tow.

“You! You lied to us that you would bring us food two days ago and then you came here to drink and eat meat with all these people? Uuuuuuiiiiiii, so it is true that you have sold the only shamba we have, together with the house you inherited from your grandfather? You are useless! Hyena!”

At this point, everyone in the bar will have recognised what is happening, namely that the overnight millionaire’s wife has been tipped off by those who were not allowed to join the party and left the bar dying of thirst. By now, our overnight millionaire will have, of course, slipped through the window and will not be seen for a couple of weeks.

By the time he musters enough courage to return to the shopping centre, he is landless, roofless and broke. He is back to rolled tobacco joints and not the finest cigarette brands he smoked on the big day.

There are no motorcycle outriders or the Probox and its battered escorts. In fact, by now our boss is in torn clothes and a pair of cheap Chinese slippers that in many villages have been christened ‘CDF’.

Just like the city fellow who struts around with a swagger courtesy of inherited money, which he quickly blows, the villager who sells land and his million are quickly separated.