When I enquired why he was neither celebrating nor mourning the results, Kimoben simply answered that he was counting days before vacating Teachers Suffering Commission (TSC).
“I only have up to 2015, and then I will be gone,” Kimoben proudly told me.
Kimoben then goes into some form of a trance explaining how things will change at the end of the magical year 2015. He says that at the end of the year, he will be one of the richest men South of Maai Mahiu and he says that this wealth will not be courtesy of the recent ‘coup de tat’ in KNUT that has brought the fire breathing Sossion into the coveted seat of the union’s secretary general.
Kimoben is saying that his new found status will have nothing to the numerous strikes that Sossion will be leading.
“By December 2015, I’ll be a part owner of over fifteen companies and Safaricom is not one of them,” he says confidently.
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He lists the kind of companies that he will ‘own’ and I need not say that I’m getting envious. He talks of owning buildings in strategic locations around Nairobi, a chain of schools, several five star hotels and a bank.
“When I talk about hotels, I mean real hotels not the kinds that sell mandazi and chai to ‘poor’ teachers in the village,” Kimoben is serious.
He tantalises me with how he will ‘adopt’ rooms in the hotels where he will be spending his weekends. He takes time to explain how ‘his’ room differs from the partitions where we call lodgings and pay 100/= per night. Kimoben gives the room a heavenly feel but I like the part where he says that he will be required only to click a button and ‘machines’ will wash him.
“I will neither touch a bar soap again nor will my back ever be scrubbed using a strip of sack, sapuga,” he is very categorical.
He goes on to tell me that his companies will also include tours and travels and a media department complete with its own paper, radio and TV station. And last but not least, they will have their own insurance company ‘to sort out things in case of accidents’.
One might be tempted to dismiss my friend Kimoben as being utopian but he has ‘evidence’ indicating that over 30,000 people from over 40 countries have agreed to ‘partner’ with them.
“We have already collected over a billion shillings by now and our head office is not at River Road but abroad,” he says with emphasis on ‘abroad’ because he knows how we like anything with ‘uzungu’ in it.
Kimoben goes on about ‘their’ group of companies and I decide to inquire how much one needs to join it.
“For you to join ‘us’ you need 300,000/= only,” he simply says as if he is not a Kenyan teacher.
I’m saying ‘as if he is not a Kenyan teacher’ because I know teachers exhale heavily before talking of amounts that are described using the word million. When he talks of over a quarter million Kenya shillings in one breath, I’m both impressed and surprised.
“With over twenty branch offices around the country, I’m surprised you haven’t heard about us,” Kimoben chides me.
Except for online information, Kimoben cannot convince me with ‘tangible investments’ that can be seen with the naked eye. He does not know the reason why the over a quarter million registration fee cannot be refunded and why new members have to be introduced by an existing member (probably what he was trying to drag me into).
He does not know why the company needs to go on collecting money from new members despite already having a colossal amount in the account.
To box me into a corner, he whispers that there are so many teachers who are ‘investing’ in the company. He divulges that Principal X has pumped a whole million while teacher so and so has ‘invested’ half a million. He knows several members.
Is it a new pyramid scheme?
