It is time to admit that my mother is a worried woman. Her eldest son has done, is doing, is likely to continue doing everything in his power to avoid responsibilities of any kind. He has "commitment issues." But that is not what his family would call it. They will say, morosely, heads hanging down in shame, a touch of bewilderment in their voices, the catch being especially pronounced in my mother's throat, "Where did we go wrong with this man? He is independent, so far as we can tell. He earns a decent salary, and he doesn't seem to squander it on drink and women. In his field, he is an accomplished professional. So why does he not seem to want to become the President of Kenya?"
Now, you must be thinking that a decade of lawyering has gone to my head, that my mother's ambitions for me are plainly all in my head. And you would be right only to the extent that I admit that I might, perhaps, quite unlikely, of course, be wrong. Regardless of your poisonous doubts about the scale of my ambitions, let us review the obvious reasons why my presidential ambitions should be directed elsewhere. Or shelved.
First, despite the pomp and circumstance of it all, being the President of Kenya is not really that prestigious. Sure, US$13,000 or thereabouts a month, free room and board, a forty-limousine cavalcade...seems attractive. But you get the feeling that if you meet Yahyah Jammeh of the Gambia, or Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria or Jacob Zuma of South Africa, that they will view you with a touch of pity. Mr Jammeh is essentially the State, and the State is him. Mr Jonathan, never mind Boko Haram, presides over the larges economy in Africa. Mr Zuma and his much-married reputation simply thinks that it is extremely weak-kneed and foolish for a man to deny his wives or concubines; the more the merrier. It doesn't help that the President can't throw a proper bash like the one ours attended in Washington, DC, last month because the image of the President and his cronies living it up and dining off gold-embossed crockery and and gilded cutlery will send the wrong message when there are millions "at risk of starvation" in the half-forgotten parts of the country.
Second, all my friends will stop being my friends and they will all stick their hands so far into my pocket, I might start to fear for their sexual orientation. Not that I have any problem with gay people, transexual people, bisexual people, intersexual people, or people my fellow Kenyans would describe politely as "those people." But I do not want grown men with jobs and careers to spend every waking hour of my working day outside my office hoping that I will twist my Cabinet Secretaries' arms so that that tender to supply uji-mix goes to one of them.
Third, my mother will tell you I love politics and if I didn't equally love perverting the course of justice through my professional endeavours, I would have loved to be a politician. But politicians have been given a very bad name in Kenya. Even Presidents have given politicians a bad name, and that is no mean feat. To become President I would have to morph into a Kenyan politician. That is a sacrifice too far, even for the likes of me. I don't want the reputation of a person who would essentially forget his principles, forget what his mama taught him, forget his family and friends, forget the struggles of the people who elected him...I'd have to rip out my heart and soul, replace it with a shiny stone and erase the idea of "conscience" from my mind. I don't think the redoubtable Mrs Odhiambo from my mother's Lake Region Ladies' Merry-go-round will let go the erasure of my conscience that easily, and I don't want to put my mother through the arduous ordeal of having to explain to thirteen traditionally build ladies from the lake why her eldest son is behaving like a cross between Mussolini, Hitler and Idi Amin.
Finally, I do not want the love of the people. When the people love you, they usually have a tendency to turn on you when you inevitably break a foolish promise you made. I don't want to promise them lollipops for their daughters and then find out that the two available lollipop companies either produce them at too high a price or at a quality that even my pet pig would reject. And when they turn on me, I imagine, scenes from the days of the French Revolutions Reign of Terror will be repeated, with me and members of my Cabinet standing in for the French nobility. I can even see one of my closest allies playing the role of Robespierre simply because I wouldn't make sure that that uji-mix tender went to him. (Yes. I mean you, Hiram.)
I love my mother dearly. Perhaps she will be happy if I work really hard, maneuvre really cleverly, and save just the right amount of money and connections in order for me to be made the Barclays Bank (Kenya) Ltd Chairman of the Board of Directors. She likes Barclays; it's British. Maybe she'll be happy with that job. All I have to figure out is what bankers do and how they do it. Do you know?
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