Get-rich dream that ended up in prison

By WAHOME MUTAHI

When you have the kind of wallet that I own, you tend to do things that the Criminal Investigation Department would be interested in, particularly if they are working for the administration of the man who was born and brought up in Othaya, on the slopes of Mt Kenya.
I have been involved in such activities for a good number of years and got away with it because the characters from CID during the rule of the Headmaster of Headmasters were not interested in finding out what I was doing behind the back of the law.
Now I have been caught and that is why I found myself eating genetically modified beans at Kamiti Prison last week.

During the government of Baba Gidi, there were characters facing charges for having looked at the picture of the man who was born and brought up in Sacho in a manner to suggest that he must go.
Others were charged with carrying placards in a manner to say that Baba Gidi was not capable of being in charge at State House. Others were accused of moving their lips in a manner to suggest that they wanted his job.
Now, at one point, some of those charged began to appear as if they were court employees. This is to say they were appearing before the magistrates every two weeks to answer the same charges and the cases were never ending. That is where I stepped in.
I came in because some of the characters facing those charges were getting tired of appearing in court forever without the magistrate ever making the decision as to whether they were genuine material for Kamiti or not.
I came up with an idea which I thought must be as clever as that of Baba Gidi anointing the son of Kamau and Ngina as his successor.

Brainwave of the millennium

The idea was that instead of the suspects appearing in court to waste time, I would appear in court on their behalf — for a fee. I was not going to appear as an advocate though.
I was going to appear as the accused. This is to say that I was going to assume that I was the character accused of peering at the picture of Mtukufu in a manner to suggest that he should pack up and go.
In short, I was offering my services as a consultant to answer charges on behalf of the accused who were too busy doing better things elsewhere.
The idea was welcomed as the brainwave of the millennium and three fellows agreed to hire me for the simple job of appearing before a magistrate on their behalf and saying: “Present, your honour”.
That is all the accused did when they appeared before the magistrate, after all. I knew that my job would be easy since magistrates presiding over court proceedings have this habit of constantly keeping their eyes down like sheep mowing grass.

They seem to imagine it is a crime against humanity to look at the accused straight in the eye, so I knew they would not tell between my face and that of the real people facing the charges.
I knew the court prosecutors would not realise the difference between my face and that of the real characters facing charges of carrying placards in a manner to suggest Baba Gidi be sacked from the State House. To the prosecutors, one accused person is as guilty as the next, and my face would never stand in the way of the verdict!
It was in that spirit that I started earning real money in court appearances. It became so easy going to court to say “Present your honour” and leave. I was tempted to order a business card to introduce myself as: “Whispers Son of the Soil, Professional Court Attendee”.
I earned that professional fee until early last week when I should have noticed that we have a new government whose ministers are walking from hospital — feeling drowsy or not — straight to the office.
I forgot the civil servants are so scared of following Baba Gidi into early retirement that there is real work being done.
Having forgotten that detail last Tuesday, I arrived in a court of law before a magistrate — who shall remain nameless because she did not tell me her name.
I was suffering from a severe hangover, having been paid my court appearance consultation fees the previous day. Most of the money had ended up in the urinal in the form of digested beverages from Ruaraka that I had dispatched down my throat.

The state of my mind that fateful morning was not cool.
My head was throbbing when I entered the courtroom and I was seeing shadows instead of real people. There were beads of sweat on my face with a smell that told a story about what had gone through my mouth the previous night. The odour of my breath told it all.
When the name of the accused whom I was representing in court was called out, I stood up and walked into that box where the accused stand. I docked in and leaned on the stand like a ship about to sink.
For the first time since had I started appearing in court, I saw the shadow that was the magistrate raise its head and look at me.
The shadow kept looking at me and then said, “Could the accused identify himself by producing his original second-generation identity card.”
When I heard that, the alarm bell in my head and the beads of sweat on my face multiplied. However, I pretended the magistrate was neither talking to me nor about me. He repeated his words, this time wagging a rather angry finger at me. I managed to reply, “Sir, I don’t have an ID. I left it at home”.

The magistrate said, “I order that you be frisked for a national ID or any other form of identification right now.” Before I could say, “ID”, four of those prison warders who wait in court for people to take to jail pinned me to the ground and started frisking me.
In a moment, one was waving an ID over his head like a gold medal he had won in the Olympics. He handed it over to the magistrate.
By that time my eyes had cleared and I could see the lips of the magistrate dancing with anger as he read the ID. He said, “Mister Whispers Son of the Soil, what kind of joke is this? Do you think this court is that joke of a page in the Sunday Nation where you write nonsense every Sunday?”
I chose to keep quiet hoping that the magistrate would see what was happening as some form of humour on a dreary, boiling-hot Tuesday afternoon.

Gripped by my trouser waist

However, he was not in a state to be humoured. That is why he said, “I knew it was you when I first saw you and today you will find out exactly why being in court is not a laughing matter. You will no longer be in a position to answer charges on behalf of your wicked fellow wrongdoers because I have some work for you to do here and now. Proceed, Mr Prosecutor.”
The prosecutor opened his mouth and said, “Mr Whispers Son of the Soil, you are charged that today before this honourable court and without lawful excuse, you impersonated an accused person. In the course of that impersonation, you answered charges that did not belong to you. Guilty or not-guilty?”

I replied that I was doing a play featuring me as the accused and that I wanted to feel how it is in a real court situation. I pleaded with the court to understand that I earn money from writing stage plays and that in support of the Narc government’s goal of creating 5,000 jobs a year, I was in the process of creating an acting job for myself.
The magistrate angrily mumbled something and before I could ask what she had said, I found myself being led into the cells by a prison warder who had me in the air from his grip on my trouser waist.
When we reached the cell, he asked me whether I had five thousand shillings to pay the fine imposed by the magistrate. I said No and he retorted, “Basi, mzee utanyolewa miezi sita bila maji.” True to his word, two hours later, I was being robbed of the little hair on my head by the prison barber.
Half an hour later, I was holding consultations with a fellow prisoner who had recognised me and was saying that this third-rate column makes him happy in prison.

Consultancy in prisons

A while later, there was a queue of people waiting to see me. I had found a new consultancy in prisons thanks to a brainwave by that fellow who pretended to be in love with my third-rate humour.
The fellow asked me, “Do you still share that miasma of excess uric acid with the Vice-President? I mean, do you have gout?” I said that indeed gout was my second name because it struck me whenever it felt like stretching its muscles.
The fellow said, “Then you are indeed lucky to be here. You can sell your uric acid-laden urine for a fortune.’’
If you think that my new friend was insane, then you are wrong. It happens that if you can prove you suffer some ailment as a prisoner, you can get a special diet, meaning fried beans, genetically, modified. GM beans enriched with weevil soup.

The idea was for me to sell my uric acid-laden urine to the lot that don’t suffer gout so they too could get special meals.
Now they were lining up to book their ration of the fluid to take to the prison health authorities to prove they were indeed suffering from gout.
I woke up in the morning to find a long queue of fellow prisoners waiting to collect their share of uric acid from me. Too sad for them, my name was called out by the warder and I was released.
Word had reached my Thatcher that I had been jailed, and she had promptly paid the fine.