Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) (17 page)

2006;

There are very few people left in the world today or so it is believed. It’s very hard to find one, but I think I found one.

Professor Solomon Muema, my criminologist tutor, from Machakos was one of those few good people left; or so I thought. He was a man of integrity, a clean slate of heart.

As though he were a blood brother to me he helped me secure a job with one of the biggest and fastest growing companies in the world, UniStar, Kenya, immediately after the graduation. Guess I was not to do the custom hustling in search of jobs that has become normality in our republic after bagging that degree. He too had friends in places that mattered, connections with the movers and shakers of our dwindling economy. Besides being my tutor he was also my mentor. With him I knew I would go far if I stuck long enough for the long haul. It was clear to me that life has ironic twists, sometimes with ingenuity. A bend on the road is not the end of the road but a turn to another direction.

Now I was one of the good guys, earning my life honestly from the sweat and labour of my hands. The good professor got me a job as the Country Manager UniStar Global. Enjoying the liberties and privileges of seated opulence was capping of my career. Housed at one of the wealthiest bungaloid ‘hoods in our lovely city, supposed-to-be-chauffeur-driven-but-turned-down-the-offer, I boasted of all corporate perquisites.

UniStar is a French multinational consumer goods company. Its products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents, and personal care products, the world’s third-largest consumer goods company after Unilever and Nestlé as measured by 2005 revenues. UniStar is a dual-listed company consisting of UniStar de Paris based in Paris, France, and UniStar CLP, based in New York City, United States of America. Both companies have the same directors and they operate as a single business entity.

I bought a piece of land in Makongeni, a few kilometres from Thika town and built a better house for my parents away from our far-flung hamlet and relocated them. It was an up-to-the-minute detached house with a mansard roof. That’s where they were going to live for the rest of their lives.

My sister, Virginia Waithera, had completed her KCSE exams and was waiting for college calling letter; June Wambui was a third-former at Mukerenju Secondary school, Stephanie Nyambura in class seven while Claudia was in nursery school. My mother was not for the idea of having them relocate, whatever changed her mind I never knew.

Great and breaking news – Dad was no more an addict. Wonders never cease! He was now a born again Christian full of ‘praise the Lord’ cliché spicing up his talking and speech. I wondered why he had chosen to join the ‘Defectors Anonymous’. He was even an Alcoholics Anonymous member and he never missed a meeting. I remembered Mom telling me that Dad was sick a long time ago. Well, I did not ask her what was wrong, and never bothered, because then I was angry, and bitter, and resented Dad so much it almost consumed me, but now it all came back.

Did Dad smell stench of damnation and had realized that hell was real that he decided to change his ways? Who wouldn’t anyway if they discovered that heaven and hell are real, and God really exists.

Dad talked of advices and how those who heed live a life worth living; and he did not hesitate or shilly-shally to advise me. I am not lying when I say I felt the need for writing his hagiography. Wonders will never end in this world.

By the end of this year there were changes in the company and I was one of those affected. I was transferred to Sales and Marketing department. Moreover, at the same time I was crowned with a degree in criminology from the Penn Foster School. My graduation was praised by my tutor, and mentor, who told me that success isn’t gotten by those struggling to succeed but by those succeeding in struggling.

By the beginning of the second year as a bourgeoisie I decided to build myself a home along the Nairobi – Garissa Highway, a short distance from the Kenya Army Corps of Engineers battalion, one kilometre from the main road. It was a well-cared-for-single-family bungalow on a three-acre piece of land. It had a spacious front yard and a four port garage. A statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in pale brown and blue – Our Lady of Mt. Carmel – was planted on the perfectly clipped patch of the lawn like a sentinel. I had bought it during one of my trips to Italy moved by my secret knowledge of Susan’s fetish towards iconography and relics.

The meadows had well-manicured green with flower gardens of geraniums, bougainvillea, magnolias, gardenias, and other tropical plants. The driveway was shaded by palm trees and bordered by flowerbeds that brightened the gravel entrance led to the garage. In the
expanse
of the front yard, there were antiquated deck chairs and tables under up-market umbrellas. At the back was a lido, a lawn tennis lawn and swings – at least I had a vision of marrying one day and Susan seemed the probable candidate for that. Exotic trees and flowers lined the entire compound completing the whole picture.

Inside, the house had a Gregorian decor meticulously arranged and put to bring about a picture of a Renaissance house. Vincent van Gogh paintings graced the walls alongside a classic imitation of the famous Leonardo da Vinci’s the
Mona Lisa
and the
Last Supper
paintings. Thick drapery hang from floor to ceiling covering the windows and imported domestic ware and furniture filled the parlour. In the bedroom was a fake painting of Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini’s
Ecstasy of St. Theresa
. I had bought it in Rome on one of my business trips after finding it a captivating piece from the chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria.

I drove an imported glossy green BMW. One day, I took Susan to my house and she was not surprised but stupefied. “Oh my God! Did you rob the World Bank? Or how much does the IMF owe you?”

I saw something, an expression, on her face. She blushed as she said that, especially the robbery part. She was about to say something which I guess it was to be an apology when I grunted something to the effect that in fact the IMF was indebted to me a substantial amount of money and added, in my thoughts of course,
it’d be your home someday, babe.

She looked at me and smiled a secret Mona Lisa half smile. I looked back, and at that moment I remembered reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet where it is written, ‘
when I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.’
We looked at each other in the eyes and deep inside her black sexy eyes I saw and felt a feeling I couldn’t cop. Then spontaneity took over. The next thing was the linen softness of her lips, the warmth of her mouth and the fine satin touch of her hands. It was a kiss more wanting than demanding, a kiss more flickering than hot, unquenchable as the deep-burning thirst, more desirable and sweet, a kiss so passionate and so free.

At that very moment I wanted to do only things that are done by couples in their privacy but I decided otherwise. All I wanted was just to take her around the house, my home,
and her home.
During a holiday in Luxembourg I had won the battle that had been going on inside me and told her that I loved her, and I treasured her.

Nonetheless, she was still in school. All these trips were done after ensuring that the man of God, her evangelizing father and the most revered pastor in Kitui, had no iota of what her daughter was doing at the academy where he sent her to study. Susan too had no problem with that. With me she had a future, and here with me she had a home. In the name of medical research and seminars and symposiums both locally and abroad she got herself lots of blessings from her dearest father to travel and see the world.

I was once tempted to tell her she’d had enough education on that smart head of hers and that we should just marry and live happily thereafter but something deep used to chunk my throat;  thus I decided to wait, and wait, and wait until when the right time came.

One day, I went with her to my parents’ home just to say hi for it had been long since I had paid them folks a visit; and maybe show them my wife-to-be. They were happy and proud their son was marrying a doctor. That was me, Son of Man, formerly a gangster, marrying a doctor.

Life is un(blooming)believable!

2007;

Denise Mwajuma from the Coast was the one who took over Carol Mwangi’s place as the IMS’s national security and crime reporter. She was featured on the
Sunday Nation’s
magazine
The Buzz
of 20
th
June the year before; and
Saturday Moonbeam's
magazine
Star People
. She was being interviewed about her new job after being a photojournalist for five years. She did not hesitate to say that she was ready to take over the mantel from where Carol (and may she RIP) had left.

When asked weren’t she fearing for her life she said, “What is there to fear. We are all going to die, in one way or another, one day. All that is there is do our job well without fear, favour, affection or ill-will; and that’s what Carol did. She was a great reporter. She is a hero!”

Denise went on to say that press martyrdom is imminent especially if things are not going to change in the country for better. “We’ve a duty to the people as journalists. We are the silent voice of the people in a world full of corruption, deceit, tyranny, impunity, immorality, and conspiracies. They shall kill us just like they killed the prophets of God. We shall not relent.”

It was now almost three years since the untimely death of Carol Mwangi, the Imperial Media Services’s national security and veteran investigative reporter. Carol’s exposé of drug trafficking and those involved was the only clue that her mysterious death was murder. Investigations into her death had confirmed that she was shot at point-blank range in her apartment, maybe by someone she knew, or she trusted. No suspects, though, had been arrested. Hers had entered the history book of unsolved murders in the country.

As usual, the media fraternity had cried at the top of their voices that there was a conspiracy to eliminate them, to kill the only voice of the people. Press freedom campaigners and activists crusaded on rooftops of the world arena to no avail. Nothing changed.

Carol’s case was closed due to lack of evidence – the killer was still walking free.

*

Urbanas sat in his office doing nothing but filling the crossword puzzle and the codeword on the
Friday Nation.
He hated afternoons in the office especially on Fridays. All he wanted to do was to go and be with the
boys.

He was now a well-to-do businessman and a blue chip company director of one of the fastest and growing software development companies in the country, Sitilink Technologies.

Moreover, he now had lieutenants in crime under his command. He was now a Capi (Captain) in command of three syndicates of gangsters, each syndicate comprising eight members – whom they called
makovo,
or soldiers, in their parlance – studying at the Nashville University. It was him who had recruited them in person, chosen the best from his many years of experience, just like he had been recruited by James, another former vocal SANU official. James was now the second-in-command (or the 2iC) of Mavis.

Urbanas now had a master’s degree and was working on his PhD.  He looked around his office table. It was a morass of papers, magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and books; notably John Grisham crime novels. He liked the idea of being the boss. All his life he had never played second fiddle.

Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock!
Went the wall clock. He glanced at it. It was almost three in the afternoon. He had a very important meeting exactly at fifteen hundred hours. He needed to stop what he was doing and drive himself, no chauffeur today, to the Nairobi’s Serena Hotel.

*

Samson checked his Seiko 5 wrist watch. He was right on time. Mandy, sweet and subservient as ever, was there waiting for him having made the necessary preparations for the meeting. Beside her was Edna, his secretary, the once trusted secretary of his slain friend and business associate, Job. Instinctively, Samson played with the miniature statue of St. Philomena on his car keys. The two women seemed as though they were a pair of mastiffs waiting, waiting...

“Is everything okay, ladies?”

Mandy, always the obsequious one, answered him.

Assured by his trusted personal assistant that everything was okay and everybody was in waiting, he went to the conference room where everybody else was. He truly was the one whom they were waiting for.

Having taken his usual place, he called the meeting to order, reviewed the previous meeting’s minutes and then went to the day’s agenda number one.

“Lady and gentlemen, this being the election year,” he began. “We’ve got much to do. Moreover, we’ve a proposition from one of the presidential candidates...”

5
th
November;

Robyn Lawino Moraa, an Anglo-African beauty, was one of the few journalists who were household names in the international journalism. Born of an Anglo-born-Kenyan father and an Anglo-Saxon of a pretty mother, she grew up in the UK where her father was a forensic pathologist at the University of Dundee. Her mother, a fulltime fictional writer, spent her time at her home office working as a consultant and adviser for young up-and-coming writers. Having neither sister nor brother Robyn was brought up being moulded to be independent in her life, knowing that even though no man is an island she was alone in this world.

As she grew up she found herself admiring her parents with both gusto and zest. She wanted to be like her father and this saw her securing an entry to the University of Bradford. At that time, her father was called by her university’s Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and this gave her a chance to benefit from him. At the same time she was much thrilled by the fame that her mother was having from her writing. All her books were #1 bestsellers in the entire UK, and most of the time if she was not on TV or radio she was all over the newspapers.

Thus Robyn developed an interest in writing to be a celebrity like her mother. She enrolled for long distance learning for a Comprehensive Creative Writing course from the Writers’ Bureau. By the time she graduated she had over 100 published articles and had co-authored two novels with her mother that were bestsellers both in the UK and US for over eighteen months. In America, her mother held the bestselling author alongside classical romance and fictional writer Iris Johansen and crime thriller author James Patterson.

Robyn did not go far from Bradford University as she joined her father at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology as an adviser on professional negligence claims and fraud deterrence. 

She was barely twenty seven when her mother lost her battle with cancer and joined the community of dead writers who wrote from their graves like Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum. It was such a blow to the family that they saw no need to live any longer without her mother. A year after her mother’s obsequies, Robyn and her father relocated to Kenya where they were welcomed with pomp and celebrations of her father’s culture and tradition.

Robyn’s father got a job at the University of Nairobi. She had other plans for her life. It just took sending her CV and application when she saw the advert. To her surprise, she was called not for interview but for the job. She became Imperial Media Service’s senior journalist, and from that day she settled to her job and part time writing. She took the Kenyan book market by storm with her suspense thrillers:
Coming to Dawn, Death of Privacy
and
The Coming Night
, writing for entertainment in stark contrast to educational books that had flooded Kenyan market.

She was nominated for many journalism awards, both local and international, and she won all of them. She also held the Best Africa’s all-time journalist title for so long it felt like she was the defending champion of journalism in Africa. This saw her being a representative of African journalists’ community many of world press functions.

On 5
th
November she was at the Copenhagen, Denmark journalists’ conference where one of the main agenda was the all-the-time journalists’ holler of press freedom. This was agitated by the rising murders of journalists and reporters all over the world, but notoriously notable were countries like Bangladesh, Somalia, Norway, the Middle East countries and others. Kenya was not left out as it was grouped fifth position for extra-judicial killings and assassinations of the voices of the people.

Even though miles separated her with her home, she kept them abreast with everything that was going on in Copenhagen. At every possible time those in Kenya were disseminating and reporting occurrences both locally and internationally they contacted her via phone and she would tell the listeners and viewers live from Denmark what was happening at the Copenhagen press conference.

She did not hesitate to highlight how the international community was displeased by the acts of sabotage that were done to the
Standard Newspaper
and the raiding of the KTN TV station and the recent murder of the Imperial Media Services’ national security reporter, Carol Mwangi. “If only such countries like Kenya that assassinate the voices of the society could just but desist from the ritual the society would be a fortress-like place to preach the gospel of justice and truth,” she said before she hung up and her live transmission was disconnected.