POLITICS ACCORDING TO WAHOME MUTAHI

Season of words, cut-throat rivalry

With WAHOME MUTAHI adopted from the Sunday Nation

Kenyan ballot papers are very funny things. Put them in a box, and in the course of the journey from the polling station to where they are supposed to be counted, they will give birth"

This is a season of fat words, thin words, short words, tall words, healthy words, sick words, lame words, walking words, limping words, words, words, words, words. It is a season of words because some people want employment and they can only get it by spitting out words, words and more words.

We are whispering about the people who want jobs in that house where the Speaker needs experience as a World Wrestling Federation championship referee in the business of making sure that an honourable member does not eat up the back of another. The members of that house call themselves waheshimiwa but someone called them waishiwa wa adabu or those who suffer from a serious shortage of manners.

They want jobs, so their mouths are full of saliva right now as they tell fellow Kenyans why they should get jobs in that house. There are others who want to be what one man called mare kanjuras [meer councillors] and then turn out to be mayors of cities that have only one latrine, and a pit one for that matter.

Since it is a season of words, as man who was baptised Emilio by a priest called Mugiano, a relative of Father Cammissassius, does battle with the son of the man who used to promise fellow Kenyans something called mtemashakuni if they brought something called nyoko nyoko, it is time to understand what those who want jobs mean.

It is time to try and understand the fat and thin words that we hear in those strange times when some people want jobs. They are, indeed, strange times when the main headmaster of this country, who is retiring, is made to show his national identity card to prove that he is a Kenyan so that he can support his project for the job.

I guess this will make the next man in blue who was trained at Kiganjo see stars when I next refuse to show my identity card. I guess I will be told: Kama Mtukufu Rais natoa kitabulisho, wewe nani, kinyangarika?

Since we live in strange times, the words we hear don’t mean what they say. There is always a hidden meaning. Here we go with definitions from the Whispers Political Dictionary.

That are inspired

Candidate: In normal circumstances, this would mean a man or woman who does not depend on certain substances that are smoked or inhaled before speaking. This man or woman should not say things that are inspired by what my friend, Emoitte Opotti, calls mboga choma. That variety of vegetable when smoked, gives its smoker, or shall we say, its candidate many ideas.

According to the Whispers dictionary, a candidate is normally a person who is likely to hear his imagination as loudly as those who depend on mboga choma. Such a person will hear his imagination telling him: "The people are calling on you to stand for elections." Nani kama wewe? Answer the call of the people. In that case, the call of the people might happen to be that of his wife who has promised to return to her mother if he does not bring a better pay slip home.

The fellow will of course not go saying: "The wife has spoken." He will say: "The people have spoken."

Door-to-door campaign: This gives the idea that the man who has heard the voice of his wife and mistaken it to be the voice of the people moves from house to house and tells members of each house that if they don’t elect him, the sun will stop in its tracks.

The truth is that he moves from house-to-house with fifty-bob notes trying to tune the mouths of those present so that they can provide the voices that he wants to hear. In short, it should not be called a door-to-door campaign. It should be called a throat-to-a-throat campaign.

Youthwinger: A member of the male species who is truly dependent on mboga choma for thinking. Should be aged anything between 17 and 55 and endowed with a voice that can split the eardrum of an elephant. He must also be the owner of a vocabulary that can outdo that of the devil when it comes to insulting a political rival.

The youthwinger must also be the owner of muscles that can do a number of things. One is to respond very quickly to emergencies. Emergencies include lifting the candidate who has paid the most money and carrying him shoulder-high as soon as his or her rival appears. Such moments offer very favourable conditions for the youthwinger.

His fingers will be walking into pockets, specifically those of the candidate he is carrying and picking what is inside them. Should any candidate wish to know how it feels to have your pockets visited by such fingers, he is advised to talk to one Shariff Nassir son of Taib whose pockets were visited very effectively some years ago.

I need not say that a youthwinger needs muscles in the right places so that he can throw a stone at the right time and at the right target and for the right money. Since he is normally inspired by mboga choma while throwing those stones, his idea of the right fee is some thirty bob; just enough to buy himself another roll.

The youthwinger is a flexible businessman. His motto is, "He who pays the stone thrower chooses the target." In short, his terms of employment depend on who is paying what.

Voter: This is supposed to be a Kenyan aged 18 and above and who owns an identity card. Many people understand though that the law is one big ass from Limuru so why follow it all the time. That being the case, the voter is a character who has yet to know how to wipe his nose. He has no idea what an ID card looks like but he owns a voter's card and proceeds to use the same to vote.

If you did not have any idea how people who have heard no voices of the people claim to hear them and then become waheshimiwa, now you know. They become waheshimwa because they understand that if the voices are not there, they can be created. They are created by believing that the law is an ass and doing something about it, including making a fellow who is only 14, the owner of a voter's card.

Registered voters: In normal circumstances, this means people who live in a certain area and are registered to vote there. According to the Whispers dictionary, registered voters are uncles, aunts, first, second, third and fourth cousins, a group of other fellows fed so much on mboga choma that they cannot tell their noses from their eyes. All are transported from the village to the city by a candidate and registered as voters. They are also transported on the voting day.

Nobody really knows

Consequently, the candidate gets what is called an overwhelming majority in a constituency where nobody really knows him. Of course, the stranger disappears after winning and returns after five years with new imports of voters. He wins yet again.

There are also characters called ghost voters who also appear in the register. They are the names of people who have become past tense but exercise their voting rights in the other world. Wonder of wonders, they sometimes vote on earth and this explains why the candidate who mistakes his own voice to be that of the people, wins. He only needs to pass the right envelopes to those who handle ghost voters.

Voter's card: A useless piece of paper unless it is in a ballot box. However, at a time like this, it becomes worth real money if the fifty-bob being paid to its owner can be called real money. The idea is to make sure that it does not end up in its destination, the ballot box, to vote for the right person. It ends up in some dustbin just like its owner who ends up in one after converting his fifty bob into the liquid kumi kumi.

Number of registered voters: When things are normal, these are the people who have been recorded as having received voter's cards in the area either to exchange with fifty bob notes or vote with.

However, the number of registered voters does not have to agree with the actual number of votes when elections are finally held. Voters' registers have a habit of giving birth without being noticed.

When the people employed by Samuel Kivuitu are asked about this, they reply: "Kenyan ballot papers are very funny things. Put them in a box and in the course of the journey from the polling station to where they are supposed to be counted, they will give birth. They have absolutely no sense of family planning."

Polling booth: This is assumed to be the little room where a voter who has not sold his card for fifty bob is supposed to mark the ballot. This is where votes commit adultery and multiply in huge numbers in some instances.

It is in this room where a voter being eaten by guilt spends a painful moment trying to think who to vote for. He does not know whether to vote for the fellow who bought him a mug of busaa or the one who gave him half a mug of maize. Finally he decides to vote for the beer mug as he mumbles: "Let me be eaten by the curse of the one who gave me maize. It must eat me since I have only one vote."

Returning officer: A man or a woman who announces election results. He or she is supposed to have a sense of simple arithmetic and to know that the bigger number belongs to the winner. However, either due to bad eyesight or as a result having failed his Standard Eight maths paper, he or she has announces the winner to be the person with the least votes

Be warned: All I have whispered could turn true for we live in strange times where thieves, drunkards, wife-beaters and child molesters are all asking us for votes and we are carrying them shoulder-high.