One of my biggest regrets in life is that I never got to attend sittings of the village court because by the time I came of age, I had already moved out to the towns to seek employment. 

In broad terms, village courts can be categorised into four. The first involves small family disputes and are chaired by the eldest man in the family. The next level involves those that require the presence of the village elder, while more complex cases demand the esteemed presence of the assistant chief.

Complex

And where things are elephant, it is the village supreme court that sits to deliberate, with the honourable location chief chairing proceedings as chief justice.

I’m not quite sure whether the real Chief Justice, Dr Willy Mutunga, has had the privilege of attending the proceedings of a village court, or whether he studied its modus operandi at university.

But I can confirm that a village Supreme Court has tremendous power (Nazlin Omar would never go rogue in a village court).

The language employed is more colourful than anything Dr Willy’s distinguished court could ever come up with. And, of course, the matters that are prosecuted are so complex that they would challenge the intellectual acumen of the celebrated jurist, the late Justice C B Madan.

It might shock modern women that in the dark ages, when members of the weaker sex were supposed to have been sat on, a woman who felt that her husband was not fulfilling his conjugal obligations had the right, enshrined in the clan’s constitution, to air her grievances before the village court.

Porridge

For obvious reasons, such cases were extremely exciting and the venue, an open space around an old tree where the honourable justices sat at the village market, would be full.

“All rise. The village court is now in session, the honourable Justice Likhakhala wa Likondi presiding,” the court clerk, a distinguished Standard Three dropout would intone.

“You are before the court, Mathlida. Tell us, my daughter, what is the problem?” would go the honourable judge.

“Judge, it’s about my husband. When I ‘cook’ porridge for him, he does not drink. There is ugali in my father’s home. I did not get married to eat ugali! I don’t know (sob) why my husband refuses to drink my porridge,” Mathlida would present her case to wild guffaws from the crowd.

At this point, her husband Eshikhutu would step forward to present his defense.

“This woman is a liar, my lordships. She slaughtered a chicken without my permission (this is greeted by gasps of shock from the men and screams of ‘liar!’ from the women) and when I slapped her a bit, she came here to embarrass me. I drink her porridge every day. I am a man, a total man!” he counters.

Ugly nose

Well, bottom line is back then, if you were a man who knew what was good for you, you ate your wife’s porridge diligently. If you didn’t, she had the option of scandalising you at the open-air market.

Besides, the honourable Justice Likhakhala was rarely as honourable as his title suggested. Once it became public knowledge that you were not fulfilling your conjugal obligations, he would apply, under a certificate of urgency, to become amicus mathlida.

Nine months later, your wife would give forth to a child bearing Likhalakhala’s distinctively ugly nose.

 

Politicians can’t afford to be clan chiefs

A couple of years back, I bumped into a distinguished group of elders at a watering hole in Karen.

There was a retired Brigadier, a former top economist, and my favourite, a mzee, who said he served as the Director of Budget under Finance Minister Mwai Kibaki.

Their ages made me feel like a toddler, but their CVs and professional exploits confirmed something I have always suspected. There really isn’t much between my ears, to paraphrase a slur that one politician popularised.

Either way, you have never seen a more relaxed bunch. They were cracking jokes and making boyish digs at each other. The old geezers were enjoying their retirement immensely.

Car loan

You didn’t need to be a genius to guess that they never earned as much money as Members of Parliament.

I saw a vacancy advert last week for the position of Director of Budget and the starting salary was Sh152,060, up to a maximum of Sh302,980. The advert didn’t mention a Sh7M car loan, or a cheap mortgage. The pay was also far below the Sh585,000 that MPs have been scoffing at as insult.

Miserable

But what I know for certain is that when the Director of Budget retires, he won’t look half as miserable as an MP who has lost an election.

The problem with politicians is that they have a big ego and they bribe villagers to rub those egos under the guise of campaigning. But the late Martin Shikuku never bribed voters as a matter of principle, yet he was voted to Parliament again and again.

It’s just that politicians like to walk around the village with a large entourage of hangers-on.

They want to arrive in big cars and pop their heads out of the sunroof royally and wave at villagers.

They want to be the ones who buy drinks for everyone in the bar, like chiefs of old, forgetting that those chiefs used to levy taxes. 

Waheshimiwa, your lifestyle is unsustainable, even if we pay you Sh2M a month.  There are tycoons who make Sh100M a month. Do you see them buying everyone rounds of beer to look important?

We pay you to make laws, to represent us in Parliament, to agitate for policies that stimulate economic growth, employment and so forth. We want you to teach us how to fish, but you insist on giving us fish via Sh50 handouts.

If you don’t stop bribing voters and playing village chief and instead focus on what we elected you to do, you will exit Parliament broke, no matter how much we pay you.

And how we shall laugh behind your back, to see you stone broke, mheshimiwa!