What are friends for? Tale of two buddies eager to stab each other in the back

Caricature of Kiambu Governor Waititu and his Nairobi counterpart, Mike Sonko.

On Wednesday morning, Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu looked into the mirror and perhaps for the first time in his life, loathed what he saw. The reflection that was looking back at him was a true image of himself. The only differences of note were the physical appearances of the person looking him dead in the eye.

Waititu is a couple of inches over six feet. The reflection looking back was well shy of this. Waititu has a full head of hair, the reflection had a close shaven head, with hair unnaturally shiny. Waititu wears just one thin gold chain that often bounces off his chest when he is running after illegal alcohol sellers in the bowels of Kiambu. The guy staring back at him often has kilos of an assorted range of metals of different hues threatening to break his fast disappearing neck.

But on this particular day, his doppelganger, not in look but in mannerism, pulled a fast one on Waititu, also known as Baba Yao, first of his name, he of slapping land grabbers, chief river diverter, asker of favours, builder of ghost rehabilitation centres and king of online memes.

While Waititu sat down with his trusted chiefs plotting the next chang’aa den raid, a desperate call came through to him. Something was going wrong at one of the numerous construction sites he runs. This time, his supervising wife and a group of workers had been arrested by City Council askaris.

What is a man to do following the news? A man is to call his friend and ask for a favour. Unknown to Waititu, his friend had woken up in a frivolous mood. He was looking for someone to roll in the mud with.

Boxer of walls

It had been a while since the friend trended on social media and the fear of missing out (fomo), was quickly eating at him.

Mike Mbuvi Sonko, just up from his satin sheets, perhaps sitting on the bed looking longingly at the crystal glasses on the table with half full discoloured liquids saw his phone ring.

He glanced over at the phone nonchalantly. Then he saw the caller ID. It was Waititi, a pet name reserved for the Kiambu governor, an indication of how truly close the pundit defying duo are.

Every so often, a man finds solace in the memories of the adventures of his adolescent past. But when this happens outside the confines of recall memory and play out in reality, then the reminisce becomes something else.

Luckily for Sonko, bling man extraordinaire, slayer of protocol, boxer of walls, destroyer of clamps, king of paranoia, enemy of State House and sacker of employees, none of these mature thoughts crossed his mind.

When Waititi’s incoming call persisted, Sonko made sure the red record dot was solid on a second device as he answered his friend’s call. The conversation was not about the greater metropolitan transport corridor.

“Hallo mdoss…eeehhh bwana, wachilia watu yote bwana,” Waititi says.

“Hio order haitoki kwangu, pigia mdosi,” Sonko responds.

“Nipigie mdosi kwanini,” Waititu asks, wondering why his ride or die buddy was suddenly taking him for a run around.

“Order imetoka juu…na wee pia usipigane nah ii vita ya corruption…..,” Sonko continues.

“Hapana hapana, mimi na deal na wewe,” Waititu goes on.

“Nimesha wachilia mama,” Sonko says.

“Ungeni wachilia kila kitu. Wachilia watu wote bwana. Sisi hapana weza sumbuana na wewe,” Waititu says.

“Boss sio mimi.”

“Ate? Ate? Wachilia pia hio watu ingine wangu.”

“Sawa.”

After the conversation that reads like a poorly thought out script of a Filipino soap opera, the chief river diverter hangs up, confident that the slayer of protocol has dealt with the little matter of the lack of approvals for his ongoing construction project.

Unknown to him, the king of paranoia was still thinking of ways to move up the trending topics list of the day. So he stood up, pranced around his palace, looked outside the window down to his sprawling kingdom before adopting Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker pose and made a decision that would be remembered by generations to come.

“Today I take it all a back. The clicks, the views, the mentions. They shall be mine. Today, we dine in online traffic heaven,” he said, before going into that long shrill hiccupy laugh that has endeared him to hundreds of thousands of his people.

Then, after the now familiar shock that has made a home in the hearts and minds of his jesters had faded, he saved the video he was recording and sent it out.

“Today will be a good day,” he said to himself, slowly adjusting the 20 rings weighing down his two hands.

At the heart of the leak was the approval of buildings and whether all suspects in the ongoing demolitions are being treated equally. But as they have often done, the two elected leaders managed to -- in one unintelligent conversation -- dumb down the serious matter of building safety and inspection.

For them though, they were in their element and the pool of mud they find themselves in can only be bigger.

Embarrassing moment

Sonko says the leak was accidental but this is not the first time the infinite possibilities of a mobile phone have excited the Nairobi governor.

In 2014, he got into trouble when stopping an impending demolition in Nairobi’s South B Estate when he called President Uhuru Kenyatta and put him on loud speaker.

In spite of this brief moment of embarrassment, Sonko and Waititu remain the conjoined twins of the Kenyan political landscape.

Both are erratic and populist. More importantly and equally scarier is that both men harbour ambitions greater than the boundaries of their counties.

For the two men, the baseline of their populist rock steady beat might just buoy them to greater heights propelled by an easily excitable audience.

It might just be opening night at the Theatre of The Absurd, and tickets are now on sale. Truly, nobody can stop reggae.

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