I am still excited about my employment status. These days, I wake up early in the morning and instead of loitering in town looking for fake deals, I march straight to a real office building and proceed to sit in a real chair and place my fingers on a real computer keyboard.

But the salary is taking so long to hit my pockets! At one point, I got tempted to help myself with an IOU. This happens when you are in charge of the petty cash and the safe keys are in your custody. When things get tough, you write a small chit called an IOU and inscribe the equivalent amount of money that you wish to withdraw from the safe.

This is not allowed and if caught, you could easily be dismissed. The chit is then placed in the safe so that you are aware of the small debt that has to be re-paid at month end. Besides, I was thinking that man should ‘eateth’ where he ‘worketh’.
 
I wanted to emulate a certain fellow called Kibonge or Kibo in short. This is a guy who believed that man was supposed to eat, or should I say drink, from where he works. Why go hungry when there is plenty to consume at the workplace? Mr.

Kibo was a burly guy who was usually invited to provide security services at wedding ceremonies. During the mid 90s, storekeeping at wedding ceremonies had become a real problem.

Intruders just used to gate crush the reception ceremonies and break into the stores to loot the drinks and nosh. The graph was at the highest especially during the rainy season.

Whenever the clouds turned dark and gave way for rain, wedding ceremonies turned into chaotic scenes. Guys would emerge from nowhere and burst into the stores to lift the crates of beers. They would dash out under the rain and melt away beyond the horizon.
 
With such fears in people’s minds, wedding meetings tended to concentrate on the issue of storekeeping.

During those meetings, attendees would search for the best possible candidate who would stand at the store and be firm.

So when a certain wedding couple consulted us for advice, Aggrey and I recommended them to hire the services of a certain Mr. Kibo.
 
Come D-day. At the wedding, Kibo stood firm at the stores and roared out commands to the ladies who fetched the drinks from him and distributed them to the waiting guests. Kibo managed to chase away all those intruders until there was total peace. Kibo had become the hero! But Oooops! Not for long. Before we had realized anything, Kibo had disappeared. The store was closed. Our barmaids were stuck because they had to serve another round of drinks and food to the wedding guests. The Master of Ceremonies was frantically calling out for more service but it was not forthcoming!
Where was our hero? Where was our tough looking storekeeper? Aggrey and I got concerned. Our friends’ wedding was on the verge of collapsing as drinks and food were nowhere to be seen. We took a tough decision. We decided to break down the door and restart the distribution of drinks ourselves. After assembling tough young boys and men, we managed to bring down the door. To our amazement, we spotted none other than Kibo himself sprawled all over the floor. In his right hand was a bottle of Primus. In his left hand was a bottle of Waragi. Indeed, our storekeeper had decided to eateth where he worketh! Poor guy had zonked more than he could handle!
 
Now that is what I call stamina! As for me, I am still resisting the idea of eating from where I work lest I get a dismissal letter. Therefore no IOUs for me! Hopefully, my boss will be kind enough to release salaries before Xmas!
 
diaspoman@yahoo.com