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Woes of teacher who blew up betting windfall deepen as he starts acting crazy

Counties

Socs, ati Thunder amechizi (Socrates, is it true that Mr Thunder has gone crazy)?” asked an excited Schola on phone as I walked towards JJ’s, our popular local.

Vasco Da Gama, the history teacher, had asked me to urgently join him there, since our colleague Thunder was facing some serious financial problems and needed a small fundraiser.

Schola has the gift of smelling a scandal even before the owner can conceive it. She spread rumours of all sorts. Rumours were flying about fast and furious; “oh Thunder had blown away his sports betting windfall, oh a number of auctioneers were zeroing in on him, oh he was talking to himself and his wife had deserted him.”

I found Vasco Da Gama inspecting a boiled goat’s engine (head) with a clinical eye. Having made sure that all the parts, including the tongue, were intact, he told Karis, the butcher, to ‘remove the bones’ from the head.

Vasco Da Gama believes that a goat’s engine helps lubricate the brains, “lakini usijaribu kichwa ya kondoo (but don’t try a sheep’s head),” he once told me.

He has a strange fixation with some parts of the head, and sucks the eye balls citing that as the reason why at his age he doesn’t wear glasses.

He also has a standing order with Karis for the male herbivore’s gonads. “That goat must have come from the Mogotio area, the engine had some natural salt,” he observed contentedly.

Grace to grass tragedy

Just at that moment, Thunder walked in clutching a sheaf of papers. I realised they were weekly fixtures for both local and international games, including the ones at Rio, which he planned to bet on.

He then ordered for ‘Mutura’ and a mug of ‘Muteta’ soup and started to extol the values of African delicacies. “So when did you discover ‘Mutura’ and ‘Muteta’ soup are delicacies, yet barely a month ago you were eating white meat only,” teased Aeneas, who had also been summoned at the joint.

Indeed, when Thunder had won the ‘jackpot’ he was only eating kuku kienyeji and greens. He once made Karis scour the whole neighbourhood at night in search of rabbit meat. “Rabbit meat has the least cholesterol,” he had authoritatively stated.

He had also threatened to stop drinking at JJ’s, unless Kadogo, the waiter, got him a special mug. Once he got the mug, he would microscopically examine it before launching into an elaborate ceremony of wiping it with tissue paper.

“One can easily contract typhoid from these joints,” he once commented as he asked for more tissue paper. He had also developed a phobia for old currency notes and whenever Kadogo gave him such as change, he would simply wave her away with “hiyo itanipatia homa, pelekea mama mboga ama mtu wa Mayai (those notes will will give me a cold, keep them for Mama Mboga or the eggs hawker)”.

Almost all the patrons had ‘tasted’ his jackpot. He once ordered half a goat for the patrons. “Choma mbavu na utumbukize mguu (roast the ribs and boil the leg)” he had told Karis. Excited patrons carried him shoulder high chanting: “Governor! Governor!”

“So why did you call us here Kamlesh?”Asked Vasco Da Gama, calling him by the nickname he had acquired.

After a long swallow, Thunder cleared his throat and narrated how lately he had fallen on hard times. He even confessed that Tsunami, his Matatu, was facing imminent auction. He had used the Matatu’s logbook as security for a loan from a shylock and time was running out.

“I urgently need some cash,” he said, offering his newly repaired Peugeot pickup’s logbook as security. However, my trained and experienced eye could tell all was not okay; Thunder just can’t handle his grace to grass tragedy and he could, indeed, be going crazy.

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