Now Mama Jimmy wants a ‘biashara’ like the neighbours

By Joseph Maina

On Friday evening, I took a stroll in the neighbourhood with Mama Jimmy. We’d spent the better part of the day in church and after a heavy vegetarian lunch, we stepped out for one of those idle strolls that my mboys call roundi mwenda, just to kill time.

A while into our tour, we caught the grunts of Mama Kevo’s pigs as they gobbled their Easter dinner away. She keeps swine in her backyard along with chickens, a dog, several turkey and a herd of street-wise goats that graze all over the estate while halting traffic and up-turning every garbage bin in sight. We may be living in a concrete jungle, but Mama Kevo has somehow turned her home into some sort of animal farm.

"If only we had such lovely animals!" The comptroller quipped while admiring the goats as they scrambled for a piece of leftover ugali by the roadside. Just then, Mama Jemo’s fat kids whizzed past us, riding their trendy mountain bikes.

Their mother owns a heavily patronised restaurant at the trading centre, which probably explains their noticeable-from-space body mass indices. Further down, we bumped into the Patels, a vibrant couple that runs a grand hardware shop. Right next to the Patels is Kioko’s kiosk.

"Wow, check that out!" the comptroller exclaimed while pointing at Kioko’s newly ‘pimped’ kiosk.

"Usisahau alianza haka kabiashara hivi hivi tu," she observed of the shopkeeper, who recently transferred his kids to a semi-posh private school.

Yonder, we encountered Mama Boi, whose mitumba business has lately commanded some handsome figures. As a testament to her thunderous success, she recently acquired a mtumba Probox. We then passed by Murage’s bar. Somehow, the comptroller made no comment as we marched past this particular business, which she threw the kind of look that’s normally reserved for hospital food. Our eventful expedition ground to a halt at Irene the hairdresser’s. Irene cultivates the cash crop on Mama Jimmy’s head, and she too has not been doing badly. By now, the comptroller was suffering from debilitating pangs of envy.

"Baba Jim, we must start a business!" she relayed in her mellow voice while gazing into my ‘deep blue eyes’.

"So, what exactly should we start," I wondered aloud?

"Biashara yoyote tu," she piped, and you could almost see the dollar signs dancing in her eyes. Zimbabwean dollars, that is. Further, she relayed that business opportunities are all around us. One could invest in shares, open a cyber cafÈ, start a church, purchase a matatu or sell njugu karanga to colleagues in the office. We could even convert our automobile – that prehistoric jalopy that calls itself a Starlet – into a taxi.

Now, after numerous trials , which resulted in numerous misses, I’ve conceded that business may not be my ticket to success, whatever the horoscopes say. Still, my neighbors’ resounding successes got me thinking. For starters, I’m growing old, and my payslip hardly meets my sub-clan’s growing needs.

Two, I’m tired of bankrolling the landlord, and our heirs’ will soon be out of school. Further, a family business might help create jobs for my mboys, considering that Jimmy treats his books like holy items (he hardly touches them.)

""Tumelalia masikio Baba Jim! Tuanze biashara pia," she exclaimed with all the enthusiasm of a fat child who has been queuing for cake all afternoon. Now, starting a business sounds great, but where shall we get the funds? The sad truth is this: one cannot start a business in the capital without capital. Again, family businesses have not been known to issue IPOs, and neither do I intend to call a harambee. I know we’ve been saving, and that banks have lately been dishing loans out like glucose to rural school children during sports day, but that may not take us far.

"Okay, we’ll see," I conceded at last. As you might have guessed, Mama Jimmy almost hit the sky. Woo, was she happy!

"Oh thanks dear!" she ululated.

So, has Baba Jimmy been living the dream, you ask? Well, let’s just say I’m living the ‘pipe’ version of that dream, but that may soon change. For now, I’ll stick to my day job, meaning I’ll keep ironing five shirts every Sunday evening. Pretty soon, my employment contract will freeze, and the dreaded white hairs will emerge.

Afterwards, I’ll retire to the village and start telling ogre stories to my grandkids, vie for chairmanship of the local cattle dip, join a sect and learn to whistle at goats. If I’m not careful, I might end up becoming what my friend Odhiambo describes: a gent with no cents. For us to join the growing list of our neighborhood’s economic superpowers, we might just have to sink our teeth into business.