By Mark Mutahi
For decades, parents of school-going children have known that the best place to hide money from their children, especially those with little or absolutely no interest in school, was where they will never look — school textbooks!
However, this is about to come to a crushing end if the government goes ahead to introduce laptops in schools. This is because the introduction of laptops will mean the end of physical textbooks, where some parents, for years, have heavily relied on as ‘safest banks’.
“For years, it’s the only place I could trust my money to be safe … because to be honest, if I put the money anywhere else in my house, those little thieves would find it,” confessed a distressed parent. “The government should delay this laptop thing until I can find an equally safer alternative.”
With the move expected to pose widespread ramifications for some households, some parents are not taking it lying down.
money
“With crime so high and considering that I don’t trust banks, the textbooks of my son, who only goes to school for, eh, well, the feeding programme, has been the only safe haven for my money,” revealed yet another thoroughly worried parent.
“I have now been left with no choice, but to go to court and try to stop the introduction of laptops in schools for the sake of my hard earned money,” he said.
banked
Some parents even see a grand conspiracy between the government and mattress manufacturers, since mattresses will be the next best option for hiding the money. And there will obviously be increased demand for them if there are no more textbooks to hide money in.
Statistics from the umbrella body of the banking industry indicate that with less than 15 per cent of the population being formally banked, the rest of citizenry keep their money under the mattress, besides school textbooks, socks and undergarments.
Already, some mattress manufacturers have begun preparing for the expected boom, and are taking innovation to the next level.
“With a lot of people in this country still putting away their money under the mattress, we are even thinking of introducing a mattress with pockets,” said an executive at one of the leading mattress manufacturers in the country who spoke on condition of anonymity.
For those parents who long ago resigned themselves to the inevitable fact that technology would soon lead to the disappearance of the ‘safety deposit boxes’ they have been using, they are already racking their brains for the next best place to hide their money.
textbooks
“I am thinking of putting the money in the tender documents of the bidders for supply of the same laptops who are not politically connected because their documents won’t even be given a glance,” revealed one parent who works in a government office.
Another civil servant who is also a parent of school-going children and who has been hiding his money in his children’s textbooks, is not worried.
He has already discovered an alternative; in between the pages of any of the numerous commission reports that are never implemented and which are gathering dust in government offices!
Homes of forgotten and neglected freedom fighters also fall within his options.
