Going to heaven? Hop onto a boda boda

World athletics is fun, especially when we are winning and some sorry fellows are losing and crying in the toilet.

The victory is always sweeter when we beat Ugandans, who have been attempting to do something that is clearly beyond them. To their credit, though, they have kicked us painfully in the teeth a couple of times. I still go grrrr when I remember how they hammered us in the marathon a couple of years back.

I was sitting in this little pub in the village and we lost interest in the race and focused on our beer when it became clear that a ‘Kenyan’ had opened a wide lead. “Kip amechomoka. Hawampati,” we nodded wisely, sipping.

It was only when the race ended and some annoying fellow began waving the ‘wrong’ flag excitedly that we realised the bugger we assumed was a Kenyan was actually a Kip-something from Uganda! We just drunk some more to drown our fury in silence.

I like Tanzanians, though. They stopped bothering with the sweaty stuff in the days of Jomo Kenyatta. I suspect each time our boys and girls kick ass at world stage, they snarl and go, “There goes those bad Kenyans who stole our Mt Kilimanjaro!” Oh yeah. We are really ‘beeed’ when it comes to this running thing. And stealing.

Anyway. So Rudisha hammers Gold, young Bett demolishes 400 metres hurdles and pretty Faith ruthlessly chases that Ethiopian Dibaba girl as one would a pickpocket. Each victory is treated with thunderous roars in the newsroom (work has been suspended because the people who should be barking orders are cheering like hungry Kenyans who have just seen a rich politician).

I strut to my desk grinning like a well fed cat, basking in the orgasmic afterglow of athletic victory. And then my phone rings.

My cousin did not just fall off a motorcycle boda boda, he smashed his knee, the same knee that was smashed by yet another boda boda accident two years ago. The old accident left him with a permanent limp. Now a surgeon has strung that kneecap together with wires. Will he walk again?

I sit back in my chair and sigh. The high of victory is gone. Now I’m just sad and angry. Angry because Kenyans will demonstrate for higher salary.

Politicians will ask them to boycott milk, or sex. They will riot because a university vice chancellor is not from their tribe. But they do absolutely nothing except whine when boda bodas ridden by incompetent junkies keep spilling passengers onto the tarmac and smashing their kneecaps and brains. Daily.

One would argue that cheap motorcycles are cool because they employ the youth, but at what cost? Maybe we should ban those things, so Kenyans can walk, lose some fat and arrive home in one piece. Ours is a crazy country. Hawkers who sell tomatoes and underwear are clobbered mercilessly. Hookers who sell sweetness are cursed from pulpit to police station.

But the stoned, thuggish boda boda operator, a killer in waiting armed with a sweaty helmet crawling with bedbugs, is the very man we hire to escort big people to political rallies.