Rumours are often quite hard to disapprove

Someone once said that a lie can travel half around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Whether it is Mark Twain, as it is widely believed or Winston Churchill, as some claim, is beside the point. What matters to me is the enduring truth of the statement.

It was also Mark Twain who is said to have quipped to a newspaper reporter that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.

These thoughts passed through my mind recently when social media was awash with “news” of the demise of former Vice-President Moody Awori.

I thought it was a stroke of genius on the part of the organisers of the annual national prayer breakfast to invite Uncle Moody to the event and finally lay the matter to rest.

Rumours, especially those tinged with malice, can be virulent, stubborn and difficult to counter with the truth.

I say this with some authority having been the victim of quite a number of untruths myself.

My earliest encounter with a virulent and stubborn rumour was as a young man in 1979 when my old man was taken ill and rushed to hospital where he slid into a coma.

A decision was made that he be transferred to a better hospital in Nairobi and I was one of the people who accompanied him in the matatu that served as an ambulance.

He was still mentally alert though weak. Then someone, a female neighbour it is believed, started the rumour that the old man had kicked the bucket and soon it was the talk of the whole location.

On my way back to the village, I was surprised when someone approached me and said “pole, we have heard what has happened and we are with you in your grief.”

Perplexed, I asked the fellow if someone in the family had died while I was away in Nairobi.

“You mean you have not heard?” the man asked. “Your father died at Nkubu Hospital some days ago and I thought you were coming for the funeral arrangements.”

It took me a while to convince him that I had been with the old man that very morning and he was alive and kicking. I cannot count the number of times I had to go through the same procedure before I got home.

When my father finally came back from hospital, many were the people who visited our home not to wish him well, but to see the nail holes, with their own eyes, so to speak.

At that time he was 66 and lived for many more years until he passed on quietly at the ripe old age of 96.

Then there are rumours of the truly mendacious kind which appear to not to have any basis in fact and whose source cannot be identified. I have personally been a victim of some.

About three years ago, I was working at the Standard Group’s offices on Mombasa Road when I received a call from an agitated neighbour back at the village. Why, she wanted to know, would I decide to sell all my land and property in Meru without giving her the first option given our good relations built over the years?

I tried without success to explain that it was the first time I was hearing about any such sale.

She thought I was lying through my teeth and the call ended on a hostile note.

Some days later, a cousin called to congratulate me on making “such a wise decision.”

According to him, there was a strong rumour doing the rounds in Igoji that I had sold my property for a huge sum to an Indian investor and bought a palatial home in Nairobi.

How I wish this was true!

Such rumours have persisted in different permutations, the latest one being that the buyer was the Catholic Church and it wanted to build a school.

This one was probably inspired by the fact that I had recently fenced off the land for development purposes.

It has been impossible to counter these rumours with the truth and have resigned myself to enjoying my imaginary new found wealth!