Diaspoman: Gone are my days of Birakas

Last week, I wrote to you with information that left several readers in doubt. They really do not believe that I am off the streets. In other words, they don’t believe that I am a real employee of a real organization. After all these years! Phew! Actually some people wrote back to me requesting me to clarify whether this was a proper job or just another kiraka! Well, I am happy to tell you that this one is a proper job and in fact, my boss is already collecting our responses to his e-mail. In case you didn’t read this column last Sunday, I can tell you that my new boss sent us an email requesting us to give him our body sizes so that he can procure for Christmas gifts in form of clothes. Do you think I could have earned myself such clothes if I was just simply working on birakas? he days of birakas are gone. Thos are the days when I was still suffering at college trying to complete my mature degree course. Those days, I used to sniff around for Companies which usually faced difficult auditors from the Tax authorities. These auditors always wanted to have all kinds of supporting documents for all expenses incurred by the organization. Since this kind of data would date back 2 or more years ago, the Organization would be faced with a hurdle! How could they get all these old documents from the archives? Besides they also had to photocopy all the documents and arrange them in a huge box file so that the tax officials could examine the paper work. Well, in such circumstances, the bosses of such companies opted to hire temporary staff to sort out their dusty files from the basement where archived stuff was kept. And that is how yours truly came in. Since I had been so jobless and needy, I tended to rush for such birakas. At the end of the week, I walked off with a cool 50k. I cherished this kind of job because it did not only get me my daily dose of Amstels but also sometimes helped me feed my ever empty stomach. I found myself buying rounds of roasted meat for myself at the Gikondo pubs. Then my college friends would join me and we would proceed to crush the brochettes like there was no tomorrow. There was this time when I was stationed at a Company where I had been spending the whole day bending and picking archived files from a very dusty store. I was joined by a young gentleman who had also been very jobless for quite some time. We cracked jokes to pass time. At the end of the day, were seen sneezing and coughing. But we strived on. Apparently, the boss was impressed by the speed and efficiency of our work. That is why he promised us that he would take us for a heavy lunch as a sign of his appreciation. Wow! On top of the weekly cash, this guy wanted to buy us some nice lunch! This really motivated us. So we cracked and cracked and by the end of week one, we had covered 99.99% of all the work. We then took him our report and he jumped up and down so pleased! “Hey guys, now these tax guys will not have any claim against us! Well done. Tomorrow prepare yourselves for the lunch that I promised you! Okay?” Yeah Yeah! So we ran off like little excited children. We began to prepare our stomachs for a mega feast. Indeed, the next morning, we rushed back to the office to finalize the remaining data. We completed by mid-day and then rushed upstairs to the reception area. We sat down waiting for our boss to come. Within a few minutes, he came down whistling in a joyous mood. He was swinging his car keys from side to side. He called us quickly “Oh my good fellas, come over lets go for our lunch men!” We swiftly jumped inside his Jeep and cruised down towards the best hotel in the entire country. But to our surprise, our boss headed towards a place called Gatenga. He drove through the dusty and bumpy roads at breakneck speed. Apparently, he too was very hungry. But which latest hotel had been opened in Gatenga? Wapi! It was not a hotel. Instead it was our boss’ own home. In a shanty looking area, the boss entered through a dirty creaking gate and pulled up. He rushed inside the house and started to lambast the house girl “Where is the food? We are hungry! Hurry up!” The house girl frantically rushed behind to the kitchen where she proceeded to distribute mountains of food on the plates. No way! It was not chicken and chips. It was not fish and rice. Instead, the mountain of nosh on our flat plates was comprised of white posho accompanied by black beans. In addition to that, we received huge mugs of drinking water. That, my friends, was the mega lunch that our boss had kept for us. In our disappointment, we pretended to be enjoying the delicious food lest we lost our birakas… diaspoman@yahoo.com