Mali ya uma.

If you want to, you can pretend that you don't want to pay for things you want. It's okay; those are the little white lies we tell ourselves in order for us to believe that we are not like them, you know? them? the greedy, grasping, amoral denizens of that imperturbable, impassive, impregnable (the "imp-" part of my thesaurus caught my eye this morning) Leviathan we all know as "Government." (The upper-case "G" is how you distinguish it from Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and the perennially benighted South Sudan.)

So go right ahead. Lie to yourself. Deep down, though, tell me, honestly! don't you think that being the Director-General of the Communications Authority isn't simply divine? No, don't get me wrong; I am not saying that he is the reincarnation of the Jesus you pray to; no, no, no. I mean, the office he holds, the position he occupies, the throne he settles his hindparts on must be a pretty nice place. I mean, in 2014/2015 an uppity auditor reported that the D-G got 6.13 millions of our shillings as travlleing allowances. That is a six and six other zeroes after it! (No one counts the a hundred and thirty K anymore, though I have a feeling the D-G most definitely did.)

What was that you were about to say? You were going to say something officious, weren't you? You were going to take That Tone of Voice and use words like "unconscionable" and phrases like "ballooning wage bill," weren't you? I would probably do the same, and just like you, I am not going to admit that half the outrage comes from the fact that I don't have a 6.13 million shilling year and given my particular skillset, well, at least my mother loves me.

There is very little in common between our stated national objectives and the facts on the ground. We are like the termites my father studied for his PhD. When we burrow inside the wooded frame of your home, or some badly laid concrete, we will, quite literally, eat you out of home and hearth. That is us and Government; it is never, ever "our" money so we see nothing wrong in spending it as fast as the taxman collects it. We have also, in the bargain, become the pastmasters at rationalisations and justifications. Do you remember the mta-do? attitude by the Elgeyo-Marakwet MCAs who had gone to the DRC to benchmark "athletics facilities" before coming home and jetting off promptly to Mombasa to write their report?

Now, I have met people who treat money very seriously. They may be profligate, but they are profligate with money they have worked their butts off, and I don't mean shaking their money-makers at "sponsors" or serious arse-licking for serikali tenders. These people might spend, every now and then, like pirates on shore leave, but they keep a beady - a very beady eye - on their fundamentals. Keep costs down. Keep expenses down. Extract maximum efficiency from your resources. And never, ever trust a stranger with your wallet. In case you haven't noticed, these guys are not batting their eyelids to be appointed to a cozy sinecure like the Director-General's; they are sitting pretty wherever they are.

The ones who did bat their eyelids are the one who had the gumption, the moxie, the chutzpah, the cheek of it, to stare us in the eye and use oily, unctuous phrases like, "It is an honour to serve the nation" and "I will dedicate myself for the good of the country." The moment the camera lights went off, the ink barely dry on their "letters of appointment", they were lining their pockets so fast you would have though money was going out of style! (Just ask Edward Ouko to publish the reports on office refurbishing between 2013 and now and marvel at how quickly desks, chairs, coffee tables, corner tables, shelves, curtains, nets, vases, telephone handsets, carpets, mats, toilet-paper holders, and shower heads are worn down so as to need replacement.)

What we have is a perfect symbiosis between hypocrisy and apathy. It is how w can simultaneously be angry at wastage on a colossal scale, envy that it is not us doing the wasting, and indifferent to it all because, "Ni mali ya uma."