I'd love to tell you that...

I wonder if the conspiracy theories are true. Not the stupid ones about the Moon Landing or the Grassy Knoll, but the stupid ones about Twitter Headgirl, her No. 1 Booster and the PSCUBotnets. I wonder if there is a cabal of "independent" voices on the 'net that spend all their time spreading the message of good cheer that is handed down to them by the Man Who Said Police Had Died.

Look, none of us want a state where all you hear about the State of the Nation is an unremitting litany of bad, bad, oh-my-God-catastrophic news. I'd love to tell you that if you visit the Java on City Hall Way, you won't walk on a sidewalk that has been dug up over and over that there is now a subterranean river that bursts its banks every time it rains in Nairobi.

I'd love to tell you that if you choose to take to the roads, you will do so in the confidence that lande marking do what lane markings are supposed to do, traffic lights do what traffic lights are supposed to do, and if you happen to be stuck behind a dinded-windows (thank you Kimaiyo) cut-rate grey import, a slight "bump" will not bring forth and armed-to-the-teeth irate-till-red-eyed driver, but a solicitous let-your-insurance-sort-it-out motorist.

I'd love to inform you that we no longer need mama mbogas because their national and county governments have sorted them out with loans and grants and business training such that all of them run veggie-delivery operations that do not need them to squat in the middle of busy thoroughfares, their snot-nosed, mushori-wearing sprogs getting in and out of pedestrians' legs, while keeping an eye out for rungu-wielding, tear-gas spewing kanjos.

I'd love to show you the pictures from back in the day when there used to be zoos, which we called "informal settlements", where we corralled men and women who subsidised our day-to-day lives by taking less than the minimum wage while working their fingers to the bone to wash our clothes, clean our homes, guard our "estates" and care for our children, because the "slum upgrading" programmes will have succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations.

But because I can't do this, let us speculate with unhealthy relish about the professional relationship of Twitter Headgirl, her No. 1 Booster and the PSCUBotnets. Is it a tacit arrangement, aor lare there settled Terms of Agreement? Is there a quid pro quo between the two groups? Do they believe that changing the narrative online about the State of the Nation will change the narrative offline about the Realities of Life in the Nation? I don't know. I don't think so. But then again, Twitter Headgirl's No. 1 Booster is quite convinced that intellectually I do not rise above room temperature, so there is quite much I am dim about. Much.