By Edward Indakwa
I left my house at an ungodly hour yesterday because I had an errand to run that I assumed was quite urgent.
I probably should have remained in bed and kept the mosquito that is a perpetual latecomer to my house company because barely two kilometres away was this humongous traffic snarl-up.
Forty minutes later, however, when I was admiring a couple sitting mute and sullen in a sleek Mercedes Benz – like they were Raila Odinga and William Ruto forced to hitch the same ride, I heard a siren.
Wrong side
I didn’t mind because I know the jam is for a good cause — the Chinese are fixing that notorious junction near the Bomas of Kenya.
I was on Langata Road and the siren announced the arrival of a big man headed to work. His escort was tellingly modest so one glance and I knew who it was.
Two things disturbed me. One, the lawmaker was being driven on the wrong side of the road. And two, I took offense that a man who wants to be President was going to work at 7.30am.
Crack of dawn
My father, who is 76 and long retired, always inspects his cowshed at the crack of dawn. And here we have a man who wants to be President heading to the office – on the wrong side of the road – when village hens have started laying eggs.
That picture disturbs me. When you are weighed down by the travails of an entire nation, when you have a burning desire to lead 40 million people, sleep escapes you.
I assume you would be up at 4am. You would fool around the gym in a vain attempt to get rid of the old gut. You would eat imported porridge – or whatever it is that big people have for breakfast – hurriedly. You would be burning with ideas and the urge to get to work to uplift your people from poverty, ignorance and disease.
