Seek riches, but sell not your soul for 30 pieces of silver

No African short story writer has captured the futility of shortcuts to wealth better than Egyptian military-literary ace Youssef El Sebai.

His masterpiece, ‘Shobokshi and the Hundred Years’ revolves around a man who comes up with a clever way of getting stinking rich and pretty fast. Shobokshi’s stroke of genius comes with the realisation that most rich men in his village are old. The millionaire septuagenarians, Shobokshi reckons, are about to meet their maker and will need expensive caskets. Yes, their rich families will be ready to cough up top dollar for something exotic to be buried in.

So Shobokshi does everything to raise the requisite capital. He buys  expensive wood and jewels for garnishing his expensive caskets. Some he festoons with gold and others with silver finishings. He garlands quite a few with cowries, or so I assume.

The tragedy however is that the millionaire septuagenarians have just figured how to live for a hundred years. There is this one particularly ailing man whose roof is in dire need of repair. When Shobokshi sees the roof, he lights up with expectation.

The moment the old man tries to fix the roof, Shobokshi is sure, he will slip and fall. Then the family will start looking for a rich man’s coffin and voila, Shobokshi will shift base from the peasants’ place on the food chain to the Mpigs’ feeding trough.

Shobokshi actually drools at this prospect. He shrugs an imaginary expensive coat onto his shoulders, and is pleased immensely with his newly-dreamt sartorial splendour.

But lo and behold, the old goat, instead of fixing the roof himself and dying in the process, hires a poor peasant to fix the roof!

How now! So now Shobokshi has to keep warning the peasant roof fixer to tread carefully lest he falls and dies. You see, if the peasant dies, Shobokshi would be expected to donate the coffin. Oh no! It would ruin his vision of a beautiful future. Looking at our country today, one is bound to ask: What exactly is our definition of happiness? Is it being so rich and powerful that when you cough someone around you says yes sir? Is it selling our wildlife and economic soul for so much cash that everyone around you becomes your obsequiously slave?

Today, President Uhuru Kenyatta leads other Heads of State in destruction of 105 tonnes of ivory and 1.35 tonnes of rhino horn. Most of these were impounded from enemies of the environment who kill elephants and rhinos for quick cash. How do you luxuriate in wealth created by destroying your own country at such a scale, or indeed at the scale witnessed in various State agencies scandals where cash meant for youth was stolen by greedy, well-connected people?

My take is that we have come to a point where we don’t even know how much wealth one needs for a good life. Those who, the Shobokshis of our country, reap where they have not sown itch for more and more. They never realise that all the land you will ever need as you leave this world cannot be more than six-by-three feet. And even the six-by-three grave will be flattened with time and life will go on. Let me state from the outset that though I have never been rich, I know there is happiness in riches obtained from the sweat of your brow or the shrewdness of the grey matter between your ears. By that same token, we must realise that if you kill and oppress people and wildlife and become a blood-money billionaire, you will never know peace.

I’d not be surprised that poachers see elephants attacking them in their nightmares. They could be in yachts or wherever, the rhinos gore them still. And those who steal from youth coffers see people dying of drugs shortage and hunger and they snap awake, soaked in the sweat of guilt. The kind of guilt that sees Shobokshi helping peasants to stay alive because their deaths would hurt his conscience.