In Gitegi, Mwomboko has stopped

Governor Anne Waiguru dances to the Mwomboko dance during the Jamhuri day celebrations at Kiamutugu Boys Secondary School grounds [Munene Kamau, Standard]

Mwomboko is a traditional Kikuyu dance borrowed from the British foxtrot dance. British foxtrot is an English dance borrowed from the Kikuyu mwomboko.

As you can see, we are joined at the hip with the Brits, and I am unwilling to repeat that Harold is a descendant of a certain Captain Smith, the man who founded Gitegi Gossip Club, which Harold now chairs. But now, Gitegi is quiet. Mwomboko has been stopped. And Harold, the chief proponent of mwomboko, is disconsolate.

If you remember, Harold proposed the Prayer Payment Initiative (PPI) in which people were to pay for their prayers. The longer the prayer, the higher the fee. Armed with the knowledge that most of his prayers do not shoot past the roof (I have seen some of them hang with strands of soot and later trickle down onto earth into an unanswered mess) the village was unwilling to pay.

He had initially called the momentum his initiative seemed to be gaining, mwomboko, and he had sworn that PPI was going to pass by hook or crook. Harold convinced his church assistant, Ndumia, to help him campaign to have the PPI adopted by locals.

If they managed to collect 50 signatures, PPI would become law and all of us would have to pay every time Harold mentioned us in his prayers. The 50 signatures were soon obtained, only God knows where from.

Harold does not look shrewd, and that is principally because he is not.

I will not take credit for any approaches that were made to the highest court in Gitegi, where Sue is the chief jurist. A group of people protested, claiming that Harold was contravening the rules that he made to govern the church, which he has always broken anyway.

At a time when parents were negotiating with headmasters to accept their children back to school even if they were not paying any fees, no one was willing to fork out an extra penny for a gluttonous man, and for unanswered prayers in return.

Compromised or not, the local jury cracked the whip, reminding Harold that all animals were equal in the jungle that is Gitegi and if there were some more equal than others, then he was not part of that select group.

British High Commission Christian Turner joins Thogoto Teachers college in their Mwomboko dance [Jenipher Wachie, Standard]

Harold, incensed, hobbled into the watering hole and came out way past midnight, hurling expletives and promising to rain fire on Gitegi.

“I know the man who initiated this whole process,” he shouted once outside the house, “and they shall eat and food will never reach the stomach.”

“I will go to the court of uphill. And I will get this bizarre decision overturned in my favour.”

There is another traditional jury that sits around a huge cauldron of goat soup, and they dip their pipes through little borings in the rim.

The court, called the soup-rim court, is the final destination for Harold, and if he loses here, which looks like a possibility, he can only now go to the International Criminal Court, where he would be sentenced for crimes against humanity, including underfeeding me.  

Some of his deacons at church were also to be chastised for having been seen with members of the jury, which Harold claimed had been compromised and which was not impartial, was illiberal, and which forced him into alcohol abuse.

But what would happen if Harold started to indiscriminately kick people out of all those places he has authority over, and it got to me?

As I was still wondering how many days I had left in this house under this dictator, and how I had been reduced to a water carrier, Harold asked me, “Do you think I can punish Sue without losing her?”

But he cannot sue Sue, and even if he pretends to be a lawyer and wears his best suit, the suit is not suited to succeed. What is more important now, though, is that mwomboko has stopped, and Harold is dancing to non-existent music.