When only aged ‘intellectuals’ smoked weed

By Ted Malanda

I almost chocked on my food when, during lunch, a colleague who is a political writer with The Standard mentioned in passing that a senior politician smokes bhang.

That shouldn’t have been news. Those of a certain age will remember veteran politician Martin Shikuku once charging that most of the politicians we see around smoke prohibited substances.

“Don’t you hear some of the outrageous things we politicians say?” he posed.

Still, the name my colleague mentioned is so revered that I shot him a ludicrous look. “What are you talking about?” I gasped.

My colleague paused, introduced a piece of chicken into his mouth, chomped away with relish, swallowed and said, “You didn’t know? That man has been smoking that thing for years!” 

Bodyguards

He said it so casually that he could as well have been talking about the weather. Many questions went through my mind. Where does he buy the stuff? Where does he puff it? Toilet? A kiosk behind his mansion? Surely his bodyguards, who are police officers, must have at least got wind of the fumes emanating from his bedroom once.

I can picture one of them walking purposefully to the said mansion and ringing the bell furiously.

“I’m sorry, afande, but I have to put you under arrest for, uh, you know, smoking that thing,” would go the long arm of the law while nervously fingering a swagger stick.

I can picture the said sage being frog matched to a police car, flung into the boot and driven at top speed to the nearest police station.

Gospel singer

If he is smart, and that man has brains, he would request that they ‘talk like men and finish this thing here’.

In which case, a certain amount of money would be wired from the big man’s pocket to the officer’s wallet in the Jersey Islands in his hind pocket.

But then again, the officer in question could be one of those born again gospel singers who would recklessly insist on finishing the matter at the police station — ‘in front’ as they say.

Unfortunately, if that man were frogmarched into any police station in this land, the officer manning the report desk would scream in his mother tongue and run away. The station boss would in turn hide in the toilet and frantically call his commander, who would call his commander and so forth, assuming none of them would not, in their panic, drop their cell phones in the toilet.

Court

But assuming that some wacky officer actually charged the gentleman in question and dragged him to court, you can rest assured that Justice Smokin Wanjala would delete ‘Smokin’ from his name and Justice Hatari Waweru would faint.

In the event, however, that this rumour is true, it would be in keeping with African tradition.

In the days of old, only wizened old geezers smoked bhang to stimulate their intellectual process. How else did you think African proverbs were conceived?

Contrast that with today when small children are going bonkers because of smoking weed from morning to dusk.


 

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