By TONY MASIKONDE

KENYA: The last 50 odd weeks, by God’s grace, we have wined and dined. Even though we may want to believe we are such tough drivers, the truth of the matter is that we are not.

That we can down a bottle of whisky, drive home and do all that appertains to being the cockerel in the house, is just by God’s grace.

With this in mind and having massively been moved to share the little we have with the less fortunate members of our society, my pal Stella and I hatched a plan.

After all, it would be inhuman not to respond to the mood of the season. We approached the manager of the ka-local that we frequent at Nairobi West and shared our plan. The manager, fully knowing that we account for a serious percentage of his sales, was quite agreeable to our plan.

The plan was ingenuous and it relied fully on the drunks’ benevolence, and, of course, their state of stupor. We had made a basic assumption that these guys would not bother when sober.

The plan was really simple; it was to auction branded items such as football jerseys and popular car accessories going by the highest bidder.

The manager had assured us that he would give us a respectable corner to do our shenaniguns. And dedicate the most beautiful waitress to hang around our corner to help us in merchandising.

Merchandise

Stella, being a smart River Road business woman, managed to convince fellow stall owners to give her their merchandise as they closed shop. She assured them come morning, they would be counting nothing but wands of money.

When she called me to pick her from River Road, I thought she was joking. “Tony, you better bring that Probox of yours to pick this stuff” she bellowed on the phone. “What do you mean?” I stammered.

“I got a carload of items here and cannot fit in my Golf,” she announced proudly and I was not sure if it’s because of the Golf or the amount of the car load.

Frankly speaking, we thought we would just have handful of items that you could stuff in a paper bag, but she had managed to get lots of stuff, some was even donated.

So we got to the pub waited for the guys to get a little drunk. After a while, the DJ made the announcement that you could grab an item and help feed a needy child.

Then Stella dropped another bombshell, if you bought a football or rugby jersey, you could have your name affixed at the back as you waited. That turned to quite popular, the jerseys were literally flying off our table.

Sold out

By midnight, much of the items were sold out and the naughty men were suggesting that I should put up for action my pal Stella and the beautiful waitress. Of course, Stella ordinarily would hiss at such an advance.

But in this season of giving, she said she was open for such a ‘purchase’ so long as it only meant staying by the man’s side just for the pub session.

“That sounds good, as you will be buying airtime to spend time by my side. That is fine with me just name your price and order a bottle of Jameson,” she serenaded one of the guys. Unbelievably, the guy said one thousand for one hour, by my side.

Stella rolled her eyes and said “three thousand per hour.”

The guy shrugged and said make it, “two thao.”

Stella shouted, “Deal.” And a deal it was all for a worthy cause.  Strike good deals this festive season and be on a lookout for that Muthutho fella.