Bunge Chronicles: Sankok antics light up the House as BBI dream crushed

MP David ole Sankok at Parliament Buildings, January 5, 2022. [David Njaaga, Standard]

If you’re wondering what producers of the Lawmaker revealed this week... not much. From showing us seats of our MPs, the producers, obviously obsessed with suspense, decided to move a short, short step further to reveal seat numbers. Turns out hoping that they would lead us into the hearts of our wahesh was far-fetched.

David ole Sankok, Nominee 001, sits on seat 16, because, wait for it, he wants “to catch the Speaker’s eye”. (I thought Millie said that last week. Isn’t Nominee 001’s originality something to admire?)

Seat 16 is perched on the right side of the Chamber. So unless the Speaker has eyes on the side of his head, it’s doubtful anyone would catch the eye from that end. It’s more doubtful that Sankok would need to sit at a strategic spot to be noticed. His green suit does the job perfectly.

Those remotely familiar with the nominated mhesh know that he excels as a choir master, conducting chants within Bunge’s Chamber. Episode 3 of the Lawmaker showed he would do better as a motivational speaker.

Nominee 001 began Friday’s episode by bending to tie the shoe laces of some lady I assumed to be part of the crew shooting the show. At first glance, I thought Sankok was untying them so that he would, perhaps, wash her feet in the nearby fountain. But Nominee 001 is not Jesus. He is not “an angel”, as he was proud to announce. 

But he has been through tribulations and the one that caused his disability is particularly inspiring. It involves a doctor who treated him for a condition he had in his childhood with an injection that paralysed his right leg.

Long story short, Sankok doesn’t keep grudges. He meets the doctor regularly over a drink and nyama choma. The bill, Nominee 001 said, is on him, “to thank the doctor” for giving him the disability that saved him from a life as a pastoralist, and which opened the door of education and, ultimately, that of Bunge for him. You should watch it and be inspired that some good could come out of a bad situation.

If you need more inspiration, the Null and Void gang offered some in Bunge, too, on Thursday, minutes after the Supreme Court crushed their dreams of amending the Constitution. If you ask them, though, the judges only ‘postponed’ the dream.

“...it has set the stage for reggae to resume immediately after the elections,” Senior Counsel Otiende Amolo, the mhesh for Rarieda said. So much positive energy in Bunge this past week. Sankok would call it a double-dose of positivity.