A bosom friend’s betrayal

By Ochieng’ Odera

Mubimu, a tutor at one of the Teachers’ Training Colleges had never fully appreciated the meaning of the idiom ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ until he met Ngatia.

Ngatia was a colleague at the same institution. The two had been posted to the college at about the same time and had worked together for a period of almost five years, during which time they became the best of friends.

Mubimu had found in Ngatia a true gentleman. He was extremely amiable, hardworking and never shirked from any tasks that were assigned to him. He would offer to undertake even the most thankless of duties without a word of complaint. Ngatia was also a devout Christian who was not known to turn anybody down, whatever his or her request. He was generous almost to a fault. He was indeed the patron of the Christian Union in the institution.

Bail out a friend

One day Ngatia finally decided that it was time to pursue his long held desire to further his studies. After a lot of consultations with his friend Mubimu, he eventually applied for admission to one of the local university for a Masters degree course. He was soon offered admission to pursue a degree in linguistics at the university. He then proceeded to seek for a two-year study leave from the Teachers Service Commission, which he was duly granted. It is after this that Ngatia approached his colleague and friend, Mubimu, to act as his guarantor for a loan that he intended to take from his savings and cooperative society to help finance his education.

Based on their long friendship and Ngatia’s reputation, Mubimu duly obliged.

With the reputation that he had cultivated during his time at the institution as a virtuous Christian, four other tutors also readily offered to be his guarantors for the Sh700,000 loan for which he had applied. It was soon time for the farewells. Ngatia bid his colleagues good-bye and they all wished him success in his studies. None of them had any idea about the kind of misfortune that was about to befall them.

Six months after Ngatia had proceeded for his study leave, Mubimu and the four other guarantors were surprised when they received communication that Ngatia had defaulted on his loan repayment and their salaries were about to be attached. Initially, Mubimu was convinced that there had been a misunderstanding, which would quickly be sorted out, since he knew that his good friend Ngatia was still on the pay roll. He was aware that his pay slips were received every month at the institution. He placed a call to Ngatia to inform him of this new development, and was told by his dear friend that there had been a mistake at the cooperative society, which he was already working to rectify.

Benefit of doubt

Three months later, Mubimu and the four other colleagues were still being deducted money to repay the defaulted loan.

Mubimu again contacted his friend on his cell phone to find out why the problem had not been sorted out. This time Ngatia informed him that he had not been able to correct the mistake at the cooperative society because there had been bereavement in his family. He promised to address the matter immediately after he was through with his funeral obligations.

Mubimu began to suspect that Ngatia was not telling the truth. He, however, decided to give his friend the benefit of doubt and allow him more time to sort out the matter.

Three more months down the line, nothing seemed to have been done to address the issue. Attempts to reach Ngatia were this time proving futile as he had apparently changed his cell phone number. Now convinced that something was terribly wrong, Mubimu decided to make inquiries about this issue at the cooperative society. What he discovered left him utterly shocked. He came to find out that immediately after his friend Ngatia had applied for the loan from the cooperative society, and before the society had effected the deductions towards its repayment, he had rushed to one of the commercial banks and borrowed another loan of over Sh800,000.

This meant that with the monthly deductions towards the repayment of the bank loan effected, Ngatia was no longer in a position to service the cooperative loan. It had been a devious and well calculated plan to saddle his guarantors with the repayment of his cooperative society loan; a shocking con game from a person who had been known to be so pious.

Mubimu and his four colleagues are still at a loss as to how they can recover the money that has been deducted from them and are unable to stop the deductions. They have heard from rumour mills that Ngatia used the money to buy two matatus.

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