Pet or prey?

In a world of predators, would you rather be a pet or prey?

If you have been paying attention, you will surely have seen that in Nairobi, there is no shortage of the well-heeled, even as we are reminded everyday that the economy is in a bad way. The number of late-model Range Rovers, Land Cruiser LC300s, Mercedes-Benz Maybachs and Porsche Cayennes, not forgetting the eye-watering prices charged for well-appointed apartments in Lavington, puts the lie to the claim that the economy is in a bad way.

I think both things can be true at the same time.

There are fewer corporate organisations with the capacity to spend and spend big money like the Government of Kenya. Even in the middle of a wave of austerity, the Government still spends upwards of two trillion shillings each year on everything from Staedtler HB pencils to top-of-the-line Prados. That money is not spent in Ministry-to-Ministry transfers; that money is spent in dukas no one has ever heard of paying way over the odds for supplies that are delivered out of time, out of spec or not at all.

It's how Nairobi is almost always flooded with new motoring iron, austerity notwithstanding.

Of the ones that get a comfortable chunk of those trillions, there are predators, the John Ngumis of this world who eat what they kill. No one thinks of them as being put upon. They have the capacity to affect government and move financial markets in their favour. They are a minority. A sizeable number, no doubt, but a minority nonetheless. The remaining beneficiaries of the trillions are pets. They exist to service the Big Dogs and in return, enjoy perks that the rest of the country can only dream of.

They will do almost anything to remain pets, maybe one day graduate to the class of pampered pets.

You can see how many of these pets behave or are portrayed on social media. They will engage in some of the most excessive escapades, many of a sexual nature, without a care in the world. They will say things that will shock the conscience of millions. They will do things that, for normal human beings, are deeply shameful and dishonourable. They will do all this and worse because that is how they earn, every single day, their pet-hood.

Their rewards, if they cared to think on it, are equally shameful and dishonourable.

The money they enjoy is the least shameful of it all. The rest of it - the power and prestige public positions afford them, the access to corridors of power - those ones should prick their conscience not asking whether or not having their bellies rubbed in public and being told "good dog" by approving Big Dogs is an image they want their children to inherit. They can't, though. They have enough money to be blind to their ritualistic humiliation but not enough to allow them to take a step back and bite the hand that rubs their tummy tum-tums.

They will never bite that hand. Never.