He should have been polite.

Wewe ni nani?!

I assumed he wasn't yelling at me. I had my nose buried in the Sunday Nation, and my APs aren't that stupid as to yell at me ati, Wewe  ni nani?! in that tone of voice that implies that I am better advised to sit outside in the elements, hugging the fence with the shifty-eyed brokers who have recently been exiled from Embassy House. Anyway, he repeated his question a bit louder. I lowered my paper and told him courteously, Nimekuja kuandika budget lakini secretary hajafungua mlango huko twelfth floor.

He was not, absolutely not, taking that as a valid answer. He switched gears. Mimi Sikujui, he declared officiously, na kama sikujui, ondoka ukamngojee secretary huko nje. Maybe it is because it was a Sunday, or that I had just realised that I wasn't all that, or that it was a Sunday and there would be no irate phone-calls from higher-ups and their underlings with chips on their minuscule shoulders. Maybe it was all this and that I am generally oily and unctuous with the less-fortunate forced to serve in inclement circumstances. I was not prepared to match him, alto for alto.

Nimeongea na yule alikuwa twelfth na akaniambia ningojee hapa chini mpaka ofisi ifunguliwe. He was having none of that. I think he wanted to show the rather trim lady officers that he was the Big Swinging Dick over there and that if we were to lay them side by side, his balls alone would be enough.

Sadly, J.Z. was not answering his phone that Sunday. He's even more chilled out than I am. Wanyambura it was, then. He is not a softly-softly boss. He is Thor-gurgling-his-mighty-hammer loud. Friendly enough when he and you are on the same side. Louder than God's revolver when he decides you are fucking with his friends' comforts. So I asked him, while he was still stuck in Thika, Mbona hawa askari wako wanataka kunifukuza kazi? I could see the Big Swinging Dick getting a Deflated-Balls feeling deep down in his belly. 

I didn't like seeing him grovel, but he should have been polite. Hakuniambia yeye ni nani, alikata kusema anaandika budget, amekataa kusema ametoka kwa ofisi ya mwanasheria mkuu, and on and on till Wanyambura mercifully cut him off. If Lucy hadn't walked in right then and indicated that I was not a stranger, I fear he could have attempted to do me an injury for how mad he was. Now every time I walk into the lobby, he ducks into his pokey office, yanks down the blinds and pretends to be in the middle of a security exercise of one administrative description or another.

He really should have been polite.