“But his money supply soon began to dwindle. Mwangi, the veterinarian, was with Wanjiru once when Njeri showed up and dressed down her husband in front of his friends for not giving her more money for the children. “How can I live like this?” Mwangi recalls Wanjiru saying.
To allay Njeri’s complaints, Wanjiru had Mwangi help her open a pharmacy in the centre of Nyahururu. The royal blue metal doors of Njewan Chemist opened for business in March 2010. But, Mwangi says, Njeri failed to replenish the drugs, and the doors closed by December.
“Even when he escaped the bickering women, Wanjiru could not find solitude. Ngatia, his physiotherapist, recalls that by 2010 the runner was never alone, even during treatment sessions. “There were always cousins or friends around,” Ngatia says, people who lived off Wanjiru. His benders expanded to include the daytime. He would push tables together at the Jimrock Club in town and lose himself in Kikuyu pop music.
He was once so swarmed at a bar that Kinuthia tried to swat people away by telling them that Sammy was no longer buying.
But Sammy was always buying. In one stupor he bought a Range Rover from a fair-weather friend for $145,000, nearly a 100 per cent markup.
...to be continued on Monday
