To those who won’t celebrate Christmas

By TED MALANDA

KENYA: There is something such as being too clever and that’s probably what happened to me when I quit my nice teaching job for greener pastures.

As a teacher, my job came with nearly four months of paid leave annually. It also had nice fringe benefits, such as waking up to discover a bunch of bananas outside my door.

The only downside is that it didn’t pay much (it took me two years to save Sh24,000) and also because I didn’t have a medical scheme, the government did not expect me to fall sick.

There was also the danger of boys smoking a prohibited substance behind the pit latrine and deciding to buy a jerrican of petrol and setting the staffroom aflame.

Of course, that would naturally be after ensuring the staffroom door was barred behind the discipline master, who happened to be yours truly.

So away I went for green pastures. Unfortunately, while this job came with a relatively fat wallet, I was only allowed 21 days leave annually.

Note, however, that you could go for years without taking a break if you became too clever for your own good (read indispensable).

But what I hated most was that during the festive season, as other folks shut down offices and went to sun themselves in the village, I was often forced to be on duty — sometimes far away from my station ‘in case something happens’. You would think I would learn from this, but what did I do next? I became a journalist!

Scribes, as a rule, don’t celebrate national holidays. It would be unconstitutional for a distinguished Kenyan to wake up one morning and discover he or she has no newspaper to wrap their meat in because silly journalists were celebrating Jamhuri Day.

Drinking

Other than journalists, police officers won’t be celebrating Christmas. As a child, I remember my father taking us to church on Christmas Day, then going back home to sit by the phone. We often found him sprawled on the seat, a crackling police radio in hand.

 The reason why these chaps don’t celebrate Christmas is because this is the sweetest part of the year for people who want to kill themselves by drinking too much, fighting, driving recklessly and so forth. And someone has to collect the bodies you know.

Which means medics and morgue attendants will not be celebrating Christmas, unless their little strike drags on for a bit. You can, therefore, expect them to hang around hospitals expecting clients to pop in with gunshot and knife wounds. That and the good block with a tonne of gas in his belly, the consequence of dining on a stolen goat.

Thieves

And that brings me to the most important cadre of citizens who never celebrate Christmas — thieves. People assume thieving is an easy job but it isn’t. Kenyans are generally tightfisted but over Christmas, they take a loan or two and get reckless so a thief who doesn’t make hay while Christmas shines is an idiot.

Anyway, as you drink yourself senseless, spare a thought for the barmaid, the barman, the prostitute, the policeman, the morgue attendant, the butcher, matatu tout and all those who never sleep to keep this great nation moving forward.