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7 Most Badass Kenyan Gangsters


Granted, this list is inconclusive and not entirely reliable because most data has been obtained from the police press releases which normally read like refined propaganda, and news pieces whose authenticity is not very clear. Then there is the conspicuous absence of any MP, current or former, yet they have the balls to steal from hapless and apathetic taxpayer every year and look at them straight in the eye when they say they are going to use their taxes to pay their taxes (it makes sense, that last part).

I also considered the fact that it is that time of the month again and we are all broke, there is a reward out on these purported criminals. Wait, is the only woman on that list wanted for ‘Illigal meeting, disobeying curfew order”? I think the bigger crime is the typographical error, and the cheeky look she has in that photo as if she was trying to get her good side…for a mug shot?

#7 The Embu GK Prison Escape Crew

In August 2005, a group of gangsters stormed the Embu GK prison and armed several inmates before shooting their way to freedom. By the end of the commotion, four people, a trader, one of the gangsters, a remand prisoner and a prison warder lay dead. This group of daring criminals was made up of, among others, Godfrey  Mulwa Kitheka (Ngilu), Simon Gitau Saitoti.

One of the images you get when you Google 'Embu GK Prison'

One of the images you get when you Google ‘Embu GK Prison.’ The pose….yo!

While this story is known among crime analysts, what did not make it to mainstream media was that the Embu GK escape was one of several prison escapes. Target practice for badassery had been Shimo la Tewa Prison and other smaller prisons from where capital offenders had broken out and gone on the run. This was before Michael Scofield became synonymous with (over)thinking prison breaks.

One of the prison break masterminds, Silas Mugendi Njeru, escaped from Shimo la Tewa prison on June 22, 2005. His accomplices were all capital offenders and he had been linked to the murders of at least five officers.Simon Gitau Saitoti was said to be a  “tall and light-complexioned gangster” which sounds like a movie villain. Like many entries on this list, Saitoti had been a matatu driver. When he was arrested, Tanzanian police officers found what sounds like a small arsenal for a drug war: seven guns, hand grenades, bullet-proof jackets and 85 rounds of ammunition. Ngilu was the opposite of Saitoti “ stout, dark-complexioned man”  said to have been a part of the prison escape.

Another prison break said to have contributed to the plain badassery displayed at Embu GK prison was the escape of 28 suspects from Naivasha Maximum Security Prison on April 21, 2004, followed swiftly by the escape of 29 remand prisoners from Meru courts.

What happened in 2005 reads like a movie plot. A group of gangsters drove into the prison compound and started shooting, they handed a group of prisoners guns and started shooting their way out of the prison. Forget what you have seen in movies though, Kenyan prisons do not arm all prison warders with guns because their role is not necessarily offense. This means that at any one time, most guns are in the armory and only the guards at the gates and the watchtowers are fully armed. You know this now, and a group of gangsters knew that in 2005 when they broke into the prison to break their friends out. So what happened to them? A common trend appears with all gangsters who display the characteristics of having titanium balls, such as shooting your way into and out of a prison, they die by the bullet of a police officer who most likely gets promoted.

 #6      Wanugu

Named Gerald Wambugu Munyeria by his parents, this criminal had a long history of criminal activities. He belonged to the same gang of four which terrorized Nairobi in the 1980s and the 1990s. The others include Anthony Ngugi Kanari (Wacucu), Bernard Matheri (Rasta), while the fourth position was occupied by different gangsters in the same period.

Going in the same trend as other thugs on this list, the gang of four went down ‘under a hail of bullets’ in Kajiado, Nyahururu and Nakuru at different times. Wanugu was most likely inspired by a criminal included in this list who died when he was eight years old. Before he started his illustrious career as a criminal, he was a mechanic and a tout.

How did he die?

“However, his hideaway was unmasked on June 27, 1996 as a team of flying squad on public tip-off tracked Wanugu to his rented abode at Kabati-ini, Nakuru. Armed Wanugu accompanied by his girlfriend on errands run into the elite squad.

Sensing danger he grabbed his fiancé as a human shield as he fired back at the police.  This did not deter the police from reciprocating and in a matter of minutes the two lay dead their bodies riddled with bullets.”

 Yup! Kenya police cannot be deterred by the possibility of an ‘innocent life’ dying in the process. And it’s clear that we have not started watching too many movies that depict police restraint now. Wanugu’s decision to use his own girlfriend as a human shield sounds eerily close to about 100 movie scripts. In the movie version, the police let the criminal go because they do not want to harm the innocent life. In the Kenyan version though, one standing behind the other makes it a more challenging target and saves bullets.

#5   Wacucu

Wacucu is thought to have been the leader of the gang. It is hard to find the court records detailing his rap sheet because well, the Kenyan court system decided future generations did not need to know. The criminal extraordinaire was alleged to have committed at least six murders within a span of two years, many violent robberies and bank heists.Gunned down on January 4th 1996 in the far-off autonomous country of Rongai. He was the first of the gang to die and as he fell Wanugu stole a gun from him and bolted. So much for the brotherhood huh? All four had had a Kshs. 100, 000 reward tag as the most wanted gangsters in Kenya at a time when that kind of money could buy you a car or more than five acres of land.

Wacucu begun as a matatu driver, then became a mechanic and later a Karate tutor at the Kariokor Social Hall. You read that right, he had begun in much the same way as about half the entries on this list, driving people around in matatus. The trend indicates someone who can drive really fast, repair and still cars and kick ass!

The irony of it all? The story is told of a time when Wacucu was drinking in bar in Maragwa district when two police officer got drunk and begun to bully revelers? The leader instincts in Wacucu kicked in and “…he tactfully disarmed them, handcuffed them and took their gun to Kandara Police Station” Wait, WHAT? One of the three most wanted criminals in the country made a citizen arrest? Of the same guys who were supposed to have been looking for him?

Wacucu, pictured here totally burying the wrong person….maybe.

Wacucu’s controversies do not end there; the family thinks they buried the wrong man. First is the fact that his mother claims he was baptized ‘Malachi’ and not ‘Anthony’. The police spokesman at the time, Peter Kimanthi, claimed that he must have used aliases. The family also claims that they did not have enough time to identify the body, and had to do so in the presence of intimidating police officers.

His mother claimed that the body she buried was taller and darker than Wacucu had been and you cannot argue with a mother about the height of her son. She also noted that the criminal had had two warts on the two small fingers, both of which were missing from the body they identified. Do you think he might be an alive and well? And in Parliament?

 

 

 

#4   Wakinyonga-The Killer

Before the infamous gang of three there lived a man called Wakinyonga who terrorized Nairobi and its environs in the 1970s. Peter Mwea Wakinyonga is perhaps the first criminal for whom the surname was enough for a nickname and the first known all badass gangster. When the rest of the world was busy enjoying the bond films, and the film release of the Godfather, Wakinyonga was busy ‘bridging the gap between the rich and the poor.’ Forget economic policies, Wakinyonga used to rob the rich and give the money to the poor, because fuck capitalism and the laws of the land.

Wakinyonga is the grandfather of criminal gangs: He redefined how robbers viewed violence as a tool of coercion and sometimes, for mere adrenaline. Wanugu was killed on June 27th, on the same day eighteen years after Wakinyonga The Killer.Why was he badass? He escaped from several police dragnets. The most notable escape was sometime in 1975 when he fled with a bullet wound in his right collarbone, and, of all other places one can be shot and still escape, his buttocks? Did you read that right? A man escaped with a bullet in his ass!

So what were his reported crimes? He was said to have robbed 330, 000 from a bank in Thika, 200, 000 from a bank in Nairobi along Wabera Street and over 80, 000 somewhere else. He was also said to have killed a Mr. Bloch as he attempted to steal his car. While I can see why someone who’s name sounds phonetically close to ‘botch’ would refuse to let his car go, Wakinyonga is perhaps the most badass criminal, our MPs aside, to walk on this Cradle of Man.

He went down in the only way a badass should, under a hail of bullets. Consider the following report:

“Police armed to the teeth and on a tip-off traced Wakinyonga to Nyakiambi Lodge and Nightclub in Kangemi, Nairobi on June 26, 1978 midnight, then surrounded it.

The pub was full to capacity with revelers enjoying his generosity. Interestingly, Wakinyonga had already dug his grave near his father’s and had sworn to kill a police officer before he died.

Coincidentally, at the pub he was boasting that he would shoot and kill the one famous officer, Patrick Shaw. While still binge-drinking, he noticed an officer, grabbed a machine gun from him but the officer pulled out a revolver, prompting an exchange of gunfire and confusion.

The dramatic firing lasted for a while before Wakinyonga was overpowered shortly after midnight on June 27 and the police recovered a revolver and several rounds of ammunition. Three bystanders, including a woman, suffered injuries. Drama would follow his burial as police made unanticipated swoop targeting young men and women.”

 Yes, that reads like a movie, and it happened, here, or as the police officers who were involved in the gunfight recorded their statements. There is a high likelihood one of the was a failed scriptwriter and he added a few lines to tune up the story but reading into Wakinyonga’s past, it’s likely most of the details are there. Further evidence is the shooting of bystanders, keeping with the Kenya police age-old fashion of stray bullets.

 Legend has it that the kill shot was taken by the one and only Patrick Shaw, Police Reservist extraordinare who instilled fear and respect due to his obsession with killing criminals. Nyakiambi Lodge and Night Club, where Wakinyonga the bank robber met his death, closed years later and the premises are now occupied by, of all mother of ironies, a bank.

#3 Rasta

On 3rd October 1997, a newspaper called Maarifa carried the headline ‘Who betrayed ‘Rasta’ to the Police?”. The headline photo was one of Bernard Matheri’s bullet riddled body. The editor and journalist were later arrested, more so for the photo than the headline.To how just how badass one Bernard Matheri was, a worthy mention of his formidable sidekick, second wife and accomplice extraordinaire, one Mary Wanjiku Karirimbi (whose surname means a small fire). She started stealing as soon as she hit teenage, at an age where girls now scream Justin Beiber and write ‘gurlfriendz!’. She stole from her grandmother and before you let your moral outrage get the better of you, may I add that the Shs. 70, 000 she stole was Tithe money her mother kept in safety for her church?

This is not a mug shot, this is a badass pose.

When she gave 4, 000 bob to her mother, she told her she had found it on the road. But mothers know, mothers always know. So her mother did the silliest thing ever, she took the money to the police station (WTF!) and was rewarded….wait for it…..wait for it….Shs. 20 for reporting the crime?

She stole from customers who visited her boutique which had been financed by money she stole from a petrol station owner. And there she also met the Gang of Three and fell in love with Rasta who, since flowers and chocolate were too mainstream, gave his new fling an AK-47 as a gift to show his love (suddenly that clutch bag does not look so well-thought does it?). She was arrested in 1999 when she planned to steal Shs. 162 million (Yes, you read that right) cash in transit went haywire. Unlike the other criminals on this list, and which goes to show even badass women have a higher chance of survival, she was jailed for seven years during which time she ‘Found the Lord.’

Another member of the group, John Kibera, was the coffin-stealer of the group, because what is a criminal gang without a man who specializes in stealing coffins. Even more interesting is that this reverse undertaker is still alive and well because, like Rasta’s wife, he found the Lord. He was first a street boy, then a burglar, bank robber in the infamous Gang of Four and finally, the last step in the criminal world, a grave yard robber.

When he was caught, he did what anyone would in such a scenario, he hid in a coffin and then ran out, scaring and scaring all the onlookers who thought the dead had risen to begin the Zombie Apocalypse.

The last of the Gang of Four/Five, and perhaps the least known of them all was Timothy Irungu Ndegwa. Part of his lack of infamity is the fact that he did not die under a hail of bullets but was instead arrested and dragged through the Kenyan Court System, a worse punishment. He was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of an army officer and his punishment committed to a life sentence.

#2    Simon Matheri Ikere- The Infamous son of Gachie

When the entry on the Most Wanted List is titled “Public Enemy No. 1” then you know the police have a funky content creator for their website or you are completely badass.

He was arrested and jailed for arson for five years at the one place where hardened criminals in KE are manufactured, Kamiti Prison. Like most other thugs on this list, he was a mechanic at some point in his life. He first trained as a jua kali welder, then as a blacksmith and finally as a mechanic. Interestingly, Matheri chose the birth district of his namesake, the infamous Bernard Matheri Thuo, alias Rasta.

“Matheri survived by swimming across a fast flowing river to evade a hail of bullets and police sniffer dogs. He came home for the first time and we realized he was now a hard-core criminal,” intimates a brother.

Then his mother adds: “Kori karega nyina no gukua gakuaaga. Ndimukanitie maita maingi no ndaiguaaga. Riu ni ndamuneana kuri thirikari” ( if a goat’s kid rejects its mother, it dies. I have warned him many times but he doesn’t listen. Now I have surrendered him to the Government).

Matheri lived a very simply but wild life. When he was killed, the only things found in the house were two mattresses, a coffee table, a sofa set, a DVD and a 14-inch TV.

The stories told on this list are captivating because they sound like movie scripts. In Matheri’s case, a curious angle appears after he was gunned down in Madaraka Estate. The police swoop was carried out by over 100 police officers who, after riddling his body with bullets the typical Kenya police way, then proceeded to soil the crime scene in ‘unrestrained joy.’ They sat on his seat and then, most interestingly, were captured by television cameras enjoying a hearty meal of chicken and chapatti. Considering the operation took place at 1 am when the gangster and his wife were most likely boning or asleep, one wonders where the meal came from. There are several theories: One, that the meal had been made before but not yet consumed and two that Mrs. Matheri was forced to cook for the men who had just made a hole into her husband’s head.

The action of the officers gets even more interesting when you consider that they were too excited to remember to remove the handcuffs from the man they had just killed. How hard can it be to stage a ‘he started shooting at my (m)boys and they returned fire’ scenario? So the body beamed to the world had the hands stuck curiously behind because the officers had slept through their pathology class and new zero about rigor mortis and why any staging should take place within the first hour or so before the body stiffens. The next day, an accomplice of his committed suicide. Unless there is an unspoken suicide pact between such criminals, the death itself was as interesting as the fact that the Gachie villagers burned his body.

Matheri begun his working life as a taxi driver in…you guessed right, Rongai.

Of all the criminals on this list, Matheri showed the most ingenuity for someone who had never attended a military school. He had never used the front door of the house in Kitengela, and his wife of two years knew him as ‘Matheru’ because there is nothing like hiding one’s identity by switching a vowel.

Matheri was said to have shot and killed or wounded:  prominent African AIDS researcher, Job Bwayo; Lois Anderson, a Presbyterian missionary, and her daughter Zelda White, the wife of a U.S. embassy employee, a Carol Briggs, a missionary volunteer.” He is probably the only violent robber in Kenya who once had a Wikipedia page (It has since been removed).

#1   Edward Maina Shimoli, The Jackal

Acording to the Urban Dictionary Shimoli means ‘a beautiful girl who many envy and love.’

This is Shimoli, she might inspire men to be badass, but she is not…

To anyone who met him or heard of his legacy, there was ever only one Shimoli, also known as The Jackal.We all know that you cannot be called ‘The Jackal’ for no apparent reason. You either have to be related to the jackal family or at least show some of the animals characteristics. Shimoli falls in the latter category of natural selection. Synopsis, he was jailed for ten years. Spoiler alert, he died like all the other criminals on this list.

The other Shimoli, The Jackal, pictured here going green after having declined the customary paper bag.

Shimoli was nicknamed the Jackal partly because he found a way to incorporate women into his gangs and plots. Shimoli was the first gangster to incorporate affirmative action into crime. His prison escapes involved bribing and tricking prison warders, once breaking the leg of a warden. During another escape, his comrades carried out an escape that is only second to the seventh entry on this list where they shot at police as they were spiriting him to safety.When Shimoli was released from Kamiti prison on March 15th, 2007, he had a record of having escaped from prison three times. Shimoli got his nickname from the Venezuelan terrorist ‘Carlos the Jackal’ because they both eluded police dragnets for a long time. Like Carlos, there is no evidence that Shimoli ever called himself ‘the Jackal.’

One of his dramatic escapes from Kamiti prison was right before he was to be hanged. He had been sentenced to death in 1996. .His last escape was from a Nairobi courtroom. Granted, the plot reads of numerous twists and accomplices but for a man who escaped from several rings of prison and police staff, having a tankfull of balls is an understatement.

When he was arrested in 2002 in Kiambu, Kamiti prison officers visited the police station and identified him as the same man who had escaped death row in 1996.  He was reported to have, among other people, shot his own wife in the back and killed his brother-in-law after he suspected they had betrayed him.

His charge sheet read like a script for a thriller movie.?: 14 murders, 88 rapes, drug deals and numerous bank robberies. Any man who rapes and keeps a record is 100% psychopath. Where Carlos the Jackal evaded capture for 20 years, Shimoli was a mere ghost for ten years. He escaped after a gun battle at Uhuru Park, then shot two policemen who stopped him as he drove a stolen Mercedes.

As if his three pairs of titanium testicles was not enough, Shimoli was photographed raising his middle finger several times to the police and judicial officers and even lit a roll of bhang within the precincts of a courtroom: badassery which got him one more year in the slammer. He was only jailed for twelve years because the police did not have evidence of his other numerous crimes. During the interview outside Kamiti prison, he expressed his fear that he would be killed and he was right because two months later, his body was lying on the cold tables of City Mortuary with a single bullet wound to the head. Shimoli did not want to leave prison because he knew, and with good reason, that an extra judicial killing was in the offing.

One event that might water down his badassery is the fact that in 2007, he was part of a team of prisoners at Kamiti prison that formed Crime si Poa. His litany of crime reads like something Stephen King would write up, but with Shimoli most of it is likely to have been true.

Addition, 26th March 2013

A reader (Chris) pointed out that I had left out one man who should have been number 1. I agree…

Daniel Kiptum Cheruiyot alias ‘Frank’
No, this is not Frank Martin but I can see why you would make that error.
CID officer, as he made everyone believe. In reality, he had only once been a Police Reservist who lost his job for hiring his gun out to robbers. Cheruiyot was also soft-spoken, murderous, cunning, and most of all, meticulous.

Looks a bit fatherly, no?

Looks a bit fatherly, no?

Like Matheri and Wakinyonga, he sparingly furnished the houses he lived in. In his house in Zimmerman where he was killed in 2005, he only had a single bed, a five seater sofa set (because a gang of five is not going to sit on the floor is it now?) and a black coffee table (I am resisting referring to it as ‘a black loot-counting table’).

“Only a few metres from the Deliverance Church, and tucked away in a secluded part of the vast estate, the house has a high perimeter wall ringed with broken glass. It is less than 200 metres away from the busy Thika Highway, and boasts burglar proof doors and windows.

Sandwiched between two houses, a passer-by has no view of Cheruiyot’s den, let alone the activities of its residents. The house’s backyard is, however, not barricaded with a wall like the front, and offers a possible escape route to the highway. “

Cheruiyot

Ignore the jackets and the clear lack of equipment, why haven’t they made a movie out of this?

He killed the first officer who went to arrest him in Imara Daima, Charles Karue and later killed Maina Cheserem.

Oh, and did I mention that the police ambush and 5 hour drama was recorded on video?
You can watch it part of it here  (ignore the lack of equipment, even Cheruiyot had bullet proof vests) and here.
What more would a man who has already survived severall gunfights, become a gangster complete with several homes and police murders, already using multiple phones in 2005, and died holding an Uzi sub-machine gun, do to be even more badass?

“Cheruiyot recently telephoned the control room at police headquarters and warned that he would continue killing police officers because he knows clearly that they are looking for him.”

Because catch me if you can? The man who did was rewarded.

Owaahh

 
37 Comments

Posted by on November 9, 2012 in Badassery, Crime, Lists, Morbid, Pages from the Past, Stupidity

 

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7 Business You could start in Kenya (Not the Sane Ones)


Its no secret, there are no more formal jobs for any of us who do not have one already, and not enough money for those who do. The number of graduates tarmacking after four years of sex and alcohol (and a few lectures) is worrying so we all need to knock up some ideas that will bring everyone money, not just to live on, but to buy that shoe (for women) or peace (for men) that you have really craved.

Also, if you are a self-righteous Kenyan who is easily offended by things that do not even concern you, this is where you get off…*opens Word Press Door*…I am not willing to apologize for any of this 7 entries, and if they offend your religion, morals, ethics, personality, sanity or any of those long words they use in court, ahem, spare both of us the online hassle (am saying this because someone got offended by the Wangari Maathai entry here)

*waiting for you to close tab*

*whistling*

Okay, now that the party poopers are out….

#7 Makmende’s ON MY WAY HOME BAR & Other Nagging Wife Solutions

If Maina Kageni and Mwalimu Churchill are to be believed, women are so nagging that God blessed them with men. How are they nagging? They expect their husbands to be home early (which btw, is relative, and adherence will not solve), cheat on them with more beautiful girls (as if it reduces the pain), let them buy all the shoes they want (which Imelda Marcos proved is an infinite number), let them have their credit cards, bank account details, and walk around with a sign saying ‘I AM MARRIED TO….DO NOT EVEN THINK OF IT!”

So, what does Makmende’s NWS (which intentionally sounds like NYS) solution offer? It offers a host of solutions for the nagging wife including but not inclusive to not marrying in the first place (preventive measure), running away from the wedding (suicide), answering in the affirmitive when she asks you whether she has added weight (another suicide), looking at a girl’s boo-(insert relevant consonant)y, leaving the toilet seat up (the first strike), farting in bed (second strike) and kicking the cat/ or leaving socks on the coffee table (whatever you fancy).

On My Way Home bar is a one stop solution because the man does not have to lie, he will be answering to the question “Where are you? “ with “On My Way Home” truthfully.

You have probably read the joke about the boss who slept with his secretary? (Women, warning, you might not find this as hilarious). So, he went to his secretary’s place after work to do that thing that bosses do with their vulomptous (at last, I get to use the word on my blog! Is it even spelt right?) Subordinates. It was as engaging, sweat inducing and bed breaking as one would expect it to be, so after he deposited and withdrew (hint: not money) they fell in a heap and slept….overslept!

I am not saying she had this sign at her house.....

He woke up and it was 3 am in the morning (Grammar Nazi’s I just repeated myself…twice! *go jump a balcony*). There were like a million missed calls on his BlackBerry (Lets assume, for the sake of this story, that it was working at the time), texts that indicated the 20 moods the wife had gone through- simple question, concerned question, mad as hell question, on the roof question, blood in mouth question, I will kill you question, I will call your mother question……….and at last, concerned question, please tell me you are okay question.

So, see the dilemma this guy is in? What is a guy with two brains and the balls of a thousand camels to do? He tells his secretary “take my shoes and go rub them in the grass…”, “why?”She asks. “You don’t wanna know”. So, she does as he demands. Then he gets into his Mercedes (Which btw, is singular) and drives home.

As he gets to his driveway, you can see his wife seething in her pyjamas? You can see her getting up from bed and onto her menstrual cycle (Don’t worry, I’m seeking witness protection)? Yes? So he gets into his house and she is there, one arm akimbo, the other ready to point at him as she begins the declaration of war. “Where were you?”She demands. What is our antagonist doing? He is calm as the dead, looking as if he just walked into his second honeymoon. “I left for work and went to my secretary’s, we had mad steamy sex and I overslept. “He says, risking his life (Spoiler: he lives!). So you can see her getting the OP-gun from her cycle, yes? Shooting him and then spitting on his mangled body? Yes? Actually no, she takes one look at his shoes and says with a smile on her face “You liar! You were out playing golf with your friends.” (Technically, that’s true)

<Do not try this at home by the way if your wife is not a sucker, or you do not play golf, or you do not play on a golf course that has lighting at night>

Bar and Lodging

#6 The REAL Matatu Driving School

Am sure you are thinking I just placed this entry here to slow down your getting to the top three, right? Well, you are actually right…half-right…

‘Locky’ (Inspekta Mwala calls it that and since he is their mascot…) have a few buses and all, but there is no specialized school for the real matatu driving. All drivers have to learn how to overlap, drive into small spaces, brake like the brake is running away and multitask. The last one is the freakiest if one is an amateur, I was in a matatu the other day and the driver was sexting (I know this because he was smiling ‘sheepishly’, like he had just typed the most genius of all things). Get this, this was on Thicker (no, autocorrect did not do this) Road, or you could call it China Wu Yi Wei (Get the last part?). He was at 100 kph, center lane, and telling a girl how he was going to undress her. It’s a manual of course, which tells you that at some point when he needed to change the gears and the sexting was too steamy to stop, he let go of the steering wheel and pushed against it with his sexting hand as he changed gears (so much for men not multitasking). That I am here now tells you I lived (or that Steve Jobs has already brought the iNternet to the Afterlife.)

There was the driver who was navigating through traffic jam holding the steering wheel with two fingers (index and the disrespect finger). And the other one who hit someone as he swerved on a ‘tight spot’. All this things require more than just talent. Seeing that the government intends to make the CBD inhabitable for people with personal cars, the demand for matatu drivers who do crazy shit can only increase, yes?

So, why not start a specialized school for the real matatu driving business? The kind that waits for one matatu to overlap before they overlap because “you can never fish all the fish”. The kind that has twenty traffic offences recorded at the court, and 1000 he has not yet been arrested for. The kind who, as an avid blogger suggests, knows that we Kenyans are dirty people who hate showers, and does a favour by splashing muddy water on us (We thank thee by the way). You don’t need to know how to do it yourself, if you have enough capital and care enough for people who get to work late because their matatu driver did not know the REAL Highway Code, then I can hook you up with the number of the driver who was multitasking ( the number plate of his car, not his phone number, lest you think he was sexting with me-not that I was sexting –I am not really helping my case am I?)

#5 Judgment Day Alibi Network

First, I know that in your head ‘Alibi’ should be read with the vowel ‘I’ but no, grammar Nazi’s just had to mess it up by making it sound like a ‘y’.

Replace something with an iPad...

Its Judgment day and you are part of the Gabriel 6. You are accused of doing the PEV with a few girls or boys (depending on the gender and sexual preferences of you, the reader-and the E in the middle is followed by ‘r’, not ‘l’), of drinking booze, of smoking joints, of looking at a religious building suspiciously, of peeing on the road, of not helping the poor and desolate, of having pre-marital sex (which is like the marital one, only you do not have to sign half of what you own to get), of thinking badly of the thugs who robbed you, of thinking the world is round (poor Galileo, why did you have to think of the world as a boob? Cost you your life…) and of a million other things, you will need an alibi, right? That is someone who says that despite the fact that the great Judge, <insert your deity’s name here> is omnipresent, you did not “…have carnal relations with that woman” (and to think The Washington Monument is not called the Clinton Mount). You need someone to vouch for you, so how about you start getting witnesses early. You will need to coach them as soon as immediately so that they can defend you in light of Angel Gabriel’s accusations. You need someone to speak up for you when you are accused of having added weed to the cookies at your friend’s birthday party, or someone to say you were not lynching that thug who had tried to rob you when you were lynching that thug who tried to rob you (deliberate repetition).

Ni Kuhama

So, Alibis and witnesses need to be paid, if the current ICC case is anything to go by. I do not think the Judge minds because we all assume he approaches each case on a clean slate (or iPad, again, since we have sent Steve Jobs to handle the connections up there). And since we will die at some point (except those who are reincarnated as jellyfish, you buggers will live forever, okay, maybe until some other sea creature eats you.), we will need alibis. So how about we all start coaching each other early? We will pay depending on how many sins you see yourself committing in your life, and how many of those will be considered as serious enough to be discussed on Judgment Day. Since you need a credible witness, bad people will have to get good people because they will be more believable, and the reverse is true because they will have committed such few sins they will not even be tried. I don’t know how much you could charge for, say, someone to say you were not having premarital sex when you were having premarital sex, but if you see the kind of business this idea will open up, we can repay the debt we owe all Western Countries, and now Eastern Countries, the World Bank, IMF, ICC, and others within a year or so of doing such brisk business.

This two guys for example, cannot alibi each other...

<Judgment Day Communications Department does not follow my blog so you can relax, they won’t know what’s coming…unless, again, they have an iPad, internet connection and Google>

#4 Flea Market for Politicians

If you live in Kenya, or you know a Kenyan, then you know that we do not need our politicians because they do little to add to the value of our lives. Why do we vote them in then? Coz we pay taxes and would be sad if there was no one to waste them on (its sort of like that lastborn brother of yours that everyone spoils). We let them raid our public coffers, take us to war when tourists are kidnapped (Kenyans can be kidnapped all we want, we enjoy it, no? But Europeans are a special breed because…urmmm, I can’t come up with a witty remark for this part).

However, now that we have twitter, Facebook, Gmail and Safaricom, we have proven that we can have Kenya without politicians. So, what are we to do with the lot? If you think of it, there are countries that need to be robbed, whose parliament offices need to be clogged (need, that is the keyword), who are paying taxes but no one is wasting them. Think Libya, now that they desperately need politicians who know what they are doing because no one has been a politician for 40 years, they need the lot. So that’s where we set up a flea market to sell all our politicians, we will have a discount for the ones who look pregnant (the men of course), another for those who talk like they did not pee before they went to bed, and another for those who sit in the backbenches and dream of how they will get out of the chamber (which would make them sound like bullets if they could pack a punch).

This flea market will not be the American idea of a flea market because, what is a flea market without the fleas? How about we put all the politicians on display with a bag of fleas for each to keep them awake until someone re-buys Laico Regency and Libyans have some money to spend that is not from loans?

Or we could just let the fleas keep them…

Aforementioned interested Buyer!

#3 Ha Maina Kidney Shop

Kidneys are the in thing!

You have two kidneys, and take it from someone who has handled more than just one cadaver, you do not need one (okay, you do need one, at least one). This is not even a new business, organ harvesting has been around for ages, and it even has the whole cartel business and all (If Karate movies are to be believed). I first saw it in KNH where a boy was selling his kidney to his uncle (don’t think of the ethics of it yet), for a cool 400 k! That’s 400 k for another thing you do not use, imagine! And it was to a relative and this nepotism country of ours that was a fair price (I would have loved to listen in on the bargaining for that).

Now, think if there was a shop somewhere in town , called ha Maina (Coz it sounds like Maini, the liver) or Figo (which just sounds either like a classy clothes shop or something Elephant Man would shout) where you could walk in and sell your kidney. Now, since this is one time sale, and we will establish that there is a market for kidneys that goes beyond those who need them for transplants, we could adjust for inflation, and the negotiation with Maina of Ha Maina Figo shop at City market (I couldn’t think of any other place with the necessary equipment in the CBD) could be anywhere close to a cool Mil! That’s a million you don’t have now, and that you can buy a ProBox with and start transporting miraa (or mirrors, whatever tickles you) from Meru at breakneck speeds. Or you could just hand it over to that gorgeous looking mama who is offering to double it for you (I should probably tell the sucker that that’s Maina’s wife, right? Or just let him…)

Clearly, Google has no idea what an organist is...

Lazy med students who have no psyche to go class, church organists (I am sure one of you will try to tell me they do not deal with organs, yes? Well, smartass, then why are they called organists?) And the very brilliant students who want to take their homework home (but cannot because cadavers are too heavy, cold, and they smell like they have been drinking all night-that, or drunks smell like they have been preserved all night.

Ooh, yuh, and I should probably add that Kidney Stones are not worth more….and no refund if the other kidney fails or is stolen by mean-looking organists.

#2 DevilNgarasha-Soul Shop

No, before you cringe, I did not just misspell ‘sole’, Bata already beat me to that as a business idea. Think of it, the devil pays in six figures, if tales from Placenta Party are to be believed. Or the benefits listed here or here.

We all tend to think of the devil as an old grumpy old fella with no sense of humor but think of it: This is the guy who controls sex, alcohol and he is the not-god of partying, how could be grumpy? His greatest creation is Lady Gaga…oooh, wait, that was the aliens, but still, this being knows Tupac, MJ, all dead prostitutes, and basically everyone else. If all religions believe that if you are not a member of their religion you will die and go to hell (except Indians and Buddhists, they believe you will be reincarnated as the ‘the guy who got it’, or a hen in Bungoma), and since you cannot be a member of two religions, then it is safe to say that everyone who has died has gone to Dante’s hell, or the Devil’s, whichever you believe in. it is also safe to assume that the economy in hell is thriving because he needs more souls (he’s been sending spam emails). What are you doing with yours except strolling around with it, risking it every day on our dangerous roads and poisoning it with smoke (first-hand, second, third and fourth-hand, and from the jiko) and liters of Yokozuna and Kuona Mbee?? You technically do not need you soul in this lifetime, and since we have already concluded in the point above that you are going to hell anyway, why not earn that MP’s salary without having to give up your brain and morals?

The Girl Might have a nice pair, but I think people would rather cash...and the t-shirt

Now that you are convinced (because you are still reading), think of only there was a shop in Nairobi, say, where Pizza Inn stands today (relax, we will still have Terrific Tuesdays, just a slightly different theme and product) where you could sell your soul. Better still, you will have a loaning option where you give that guy your currently unneeded soul, you get a check, you cross to StanChart, cash it, cross to Hilton and get the Presidential Suite, and ask for a ‘Pillow” (which, btw, in five-star hotel refers to a ‘someone’). Even better still, and am going a little on a stretch here, say Lucifer is like Al Shabaab and deals only in cash? Then you get to walk in town with a bag of cash for selling something you did not need, you can even just cross to Hilton without having to get to the other side first (and hope to God a mad City Hoppa does not run your over then because you will need your soul but you cannot get it because the devil has not gotten the investment back).

I am so convinced...you?

Suffice to say that you can then wake up at 8:30, or even midday, on a weekday and not have to make up some reason why you cannot get to work (btw, don’t try the ‘sick’ excuse if you work in a hospital). You won’t even feel guilty about it, partly because you are now in the real Camp Mullah, and partly because…..well, you are soulless?

This Ostriches need a soul....or just an ashtray...

#1 Wanka Sperm Shop

Feminists, relax! There’s something in this for you…

If you think of it, most of the other entries are one-time sales. Once you get the worth you do not have the product anymore, true.

Then I said sperm shop, not sperm bank, because the other is just a wrongly named storage place (with no interest, no tellers, no G4S guards looking at how much money you are withdrawing, and no long queues, how can it qualify as a bank?…and once you deposit, you can’t withdraw?)

A Chinese Sperm Bank that does not have magazines and cheap porn.

So, what’s different with Wanka Sperm Shop? It’s a place where the spermatozoa, those wriggly looking things that men with balls of steel and titanium do not have (eat that, all you badasses!). Do they have market? Yes actually, most women, and I am sure most married men reading this will agree, do not want to be married, but they want kids (and if Steve Harvey is to be believed, a gay guy to talk to, and a retarded guy for the sack and an old guy for the expensive dates and rent). So, how much could they go for? Sadly, this is a class market and the market is differentiated, it’s sort of like going to a car shop without a bank loan.

Where can you put this? (I have not even thought about this twice) Where MR. PRICE stands! There, right next to the Tom Mboya statue on Moi Avenue and not Tom Mboya street (#justtoConfuseMyEnemies). If you think of it, there’s no better place, Tusky’s is right behind so Vaseline and Lotion deliveries can be made in real time, there’s a real bank next to it (And The Soul Shop on the other side will bring hornytoad campus kids to town on Terrific Tuesdays). And assuming that Gor Mahia fans who thronged the statue before the match do so every time, the supply of good, South Nyanza seed will be more than enough.

Market differentiation? It will depend on what the buyer wants; do you want a good, meek guy who will most likely end up in a government department asking himself what he is saying when he is saying it? Do you want your child to be an MP who pours flour on his head to protest against food insecurity? Or do you want a child who will be so beautiful that her posters at Muthaiga Roundabout make China Wu Yi take two years at a single spot? Better still, do you want a brilliant child, a child so sharp that he or she is born tweeting? Do you want your child your child to thank Google at his graduation?

Until this happens

The money paid for a vial will vary with the person’s personality and the health of their product. Unlike what teenagers believe, sperm is much like human beings, there are those that are double-tailed (sounds like the Matrix, yes?), double-headed (ahem, this is not funny anymore), those that are headless, or tailless….or, wait for it…..wait for it….weak! Now, I don’t know whether you know what a weak sperm is, it’s basically the underdog of sperms. Let me give you an idea of what a weak sperm is…since you are here now, and reading this, you are obviously the strongest –weak sperm, or the luckiest strongest-weak-sperm, or the closest-luckiest-strongest-weak sperm (you get the idea).  Weak sperms generally die ‘on the way’, which is sad because they live for this, it is their last frontier, the pilgrimage to Ova! (For a moment there you thought that was an actual place, yes? Technically it is…)

So say, you have a vial of seed from, urmmm, Biko of the Sevens Team, or Oliech, or Usain Bolt (because his name suggests the buggers bolt for dear life) or Rudisha (although a discount would have to be given because the child will cry ‘faaaaaa’ instead of ‘baaaaahhh’ before he asks for his ‘fiatu’), the price is a premium ( I would have added Samuel Wanjiru, but from the fact that two men claim the winning sperm of theirs, maybe we should leave him out). And what if you have Lumumba’s (PLO, the guy who talks like he ask for his shots ‘on the books’, the one we booted from the KACC), or Mutula Kilonzo’s (Used to be brilliant, then he went into the cabinet-first letter not capitalized intentionally) or Bethuel the Genius (Boy could draw the heart in class three-when you were still peeing in bed), then the premium is even higher. You could as well be jobless and title less but still have a decent pair of balls, the point is, there are a million reasons to sell your seed (which is in millions, but we should not go there just yet.

And don’t think that sperm is not valuable, the have actually been sperm bank heists and break-ins okay, maybe not yet…
.

Ignore the Tuzo sign on the right top corner...

So there you have it, stay broke at you own peril!

As you might have noticed, not only am I the master of Suspense but I…

 
3 Comments

Posted by on October 22, 2011 in Badassery, Causes, Lists, Random, Stupidity

 

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Kahawa Sukari & the Second Random Walk


Another random walk. Another blank page.

Clean and fed now, it all seems like a blur, becoming clearer as the words flow out 😉

Okay, not this words..but a threat is a good way to start 😉

Unlike last time, today was driven purely by the spirit of adventure. I was minding my own business (read surfing over 15 tabs at more or less the same time) when my friend Bill came to visit. All men know that after two males explore the topics of women, booze, sex (different from women, in a way) and money (genre includes cars and all that it can buy), what follows is the weird silence. Where ladies would normally fill it up with conversations of their boyfriends, hairdresser, or a good shoe she saw at Jade Collections, we men are not inclined to do the same. It is the spirit of the Bro Code 😉

So after roughly fifteen minutes of conversation, with all topics explored beyond all points of available research at the time, Bill and I decided to take a walk. It was meant to be random, no direction at all, and so it was.

We left, followed Thika Road for sometime, which I must say is turning up to be quite something (although I still think the foot bridges are overdue, I saw someone narrowly miss getting hit by a speeding car yesterday), and walked leisurely. First stop, a furniture store where I saw this nice sofa bed(huh?), nice ended when the lady outside told me it is worth 40K. You know that feeling you get when something turns up to be too expensive to be beautiful? Yup, that kind..

Where was I?

At the Kahawa Sukari (which always sounds like a different way of saying chips funga) turn, the idea to enter Cyber Inn (the CRAPIEST name ever given to a club) and find out how good their nyama choma is, but it remained just that, an idea. Then there is the place where Pause Club (which I always thought was ‘Paws’) used to be, that little deformed club that was actually just one triangle tent at the end of the petrol station?

Into Kahawa Sukari, and the journey began…

If you have ever been at the Kahawa Sukari shopping Centre, then you know that as a visitor, there is not much to see except a few shops, clubs and such shenanigans. For the keen eye though, the economy of that little shopping centre seems to be built on something else that is not visible, at first. That’s when you notice the posh cars following the road…and what used to be a big barrier for getting into the estate. Now, when you look at it from the road, it seems like a small estate, I have only been there once before, a few months before I joined campus, and I kind of got lost…but that’s an embarrassing story only my journal knows ;)..

Two packs of sugarcane worth 10 bob each and the journey began…we just walked in as if we know the place, followed the tarmac road. Proboxes and its cousins the Succeed and other ugly but still practical cars were in plenty, I think I almost got hit thrice because I thought they were leaner than they seemed, like we could both fit on the road.

Kahawa Sukari is a posh estate, posh in the sense that you can see the well-manicured lawns and the effort placed on making the outside of the houses fit in. There are small shopping centers, a lot of quiet and peace after you have left the business of the highway. Bill asked me a funny question, it was funny to me because I was thinking it too, ‘how comes I do not know a single person who lives here?’. It is not like I would have dropped in or anything, but none of us knows anyone, at all, or has ever known anyone, who lives in this Sukari place. It is an upper middle class, mildly rich place, the kind of place you move to after several promotions, with or without quotes. It gives you a sense of what the gated communities such as Tatu City will look like when and if the court battles and greed ever end.

We stalked a girl for a while, okay, I just said that to sound creepy, we did not stalk her, she just happened to be headed the same way, and she kept looking behind like we were rapists at 3 PM (very few freaks have those kind of balls missus). Anyway, it is a boring place, there is little to see except big houses built on one of the few tracts of land that the Kenyatta family has sold. There were huge gates, monstrous houses, too much effort on the outside appearance, except for one guy who had what seemed like the empty crates side of EABL and KWAL combined on his balcony…trophies?

So we kept walking…

An hour later, we came to what we had been looking for, the end of the tarmac road. For the seasoned adventurer, this is where the learning begins. But it had already begun a few meters before…At the end of the tarmac is an academy whose name escapes me. It looks posh-ish, not exaggerated, but you can tell that only a good payslip can afford it. Next to it, next like sharing an electric fence (‘sharing’ in that one side erected it and the other has to live with it) is a public primary school with dilapidated buildings, and children with torn uniform. My camera was working, but I could not bring myself to take a photo of the school sign erected a few meters in. There is no gate, no fence except the one that divides them from Kahawa Sukari. It is Irony at its crudest…

Anyway, where was I? The end of the tarmac…yes…

And the snaking earth road where we had to hop into the tall grass to escape the dust from passing trucks and Proboxes (this things are everywhere!). 200 meters and we found the stage where those tiny matatus (if you can call them that) behind Engen dock, were in Mwihoko.

Mwihoko means hope in Kikuyu, and its on the other side of the valley from Kahawa Sukari. Its situational irony, or the person who named it wanted to pass a message. There is little to see in this place, the dilapidated houses, the new apartments, the dust, the clay soil…When you look behind you, the beautiful houses from where we just were in this journey. This are the unofficial servant quarters of the Sukari side, I presume. This is where the gardeners, house helps, drivers, watchmen, out-of-town thugs, come from. It has little to show except for open fields, and in the horizon, the Eastern Bypass. I actually saw a plane take off from afar, then when I was going to show it to Bill, it was not there anymore. I am sure I saw one, at least I was at the time…

The weird thing is, there was no hotel where the sign was pointing, not even a kiosk..

Yes, Mwihoko was not the end, we just walked into the town, getting dusty in the process, with the early evening sun doing what it does best. The valley stretches for miles and miles, with little civilization in the dry river between the two humanities. It is a weird balance, yet it shows the perils of capitalism, the way some have and some do not, and in most cases, it is a fault of neither. So whom do you blame for such an imbalance?

We just followed the road, staring at the little children with running noses outside their houses as we passed. Mwihoko is not a slum, at least not in the context of dilapidated houses. Actually, after a few turns you can see nice houses, and fenced plots of land. There are no paper houses, at least in the parts I saw, and there is breathing space. Some houses are so good that they seem lost on this side of the valley, but somehow, they seem to fit in…

Houses, almost in the middle of nowhere...

SO we walked on…

Then we got to what looked like an open field, it was not a field, it’s a huge tract of undeveloped land which am suspecting belongs to that family from Gatundu. Its an expansive tract of land, I think it took us about half an hour to cross it, and on the way we saw a couple of teenagers making out, that, or they were miming at each other, cows in abundance, and a lot of excrement. I cannot say here whether it was all animal or not, but I bet there is something from intelligible life from other life forms there.

At some point I thought we would emerge somewhere in Mwiki, or the backside of Kasarani (which sounds so wrong), but when we got to the civilization we had been seeing all along, I knew where we were, Kimbo, where I was in my other random walk! Phew! For finding, we had not gone so far, and darn! For the dust attack we were just about to endure…and endure we did. We walked all the way back, sometimes walking for hundreds of meters without saying a word. There was little to see, at least for me, until the turn where we could escape the dusty road and head back to Wendani, but there were more than three weddings. I am not one to show concern for such ceremonies, but the dust…I guess someone will have to take a very long shower before those honeymoon perks can be viable.

Then there was a road (thats Bill on the left)

the Dust, and thats when there was only one vehicle on the road..

And there was litter of cute dogs, cute, until their mother growled from underneath them when I went too close. I guess today’s walk was somehere between 12-17 kilometers, which is not the longest I have done in the name of randomness, but it ranks as one of the most random. Bill said he got three coats of dust from the changes from tarmac, clay soil, weird looking dusty murram, and the dusty soil whose name I did not care to even guess. That, and that the Nakumatt attendant almost held her nose when I walked up to her.

...and then the evening sun...

 

So, where to next?

 
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Posted by on August 20, 2011 in Exercise, Random

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

 
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