Money Maker

 3 AM!!! 3AM!!? 3 AM in the morning? That when that sweet snooze starts and one goes limp from some deep sleep. You don’t want to move. WHO WAKES YOU UP AT 3 AM IN THE MORNING? It could only be Tony. Here he was. Drunk, rugged and roughed up. Worse still he had come with a taxi all the way? Guess who had to pay? 1,500 shillings for the trip, then another 2,000 shillings to his home. Thank you God there was some money in the house. Worse still he ate all my food from the fridge.

He had gone to university, completed. He had done some work. He got work before me and I graduated before him. He was doing alright for himself, paying rent, buying his food, enjoying life and leaving me alone. I don’t know what happened, but I have a feeling he thought there was money, so he didn’t need to work.

He started acting like a mad man, jumping over cars, shouting at people just two feet away from him, screaming, rolling around in the dirt, waking people up at 3 am to pay his taxi fare and steal their food. I noticed something though, the moment he got money he was calm. He was so calm that the person he was pestering had to reflect a bit to check if they were the ones who were insane. He would take the money and make a quick exit, off to the next person.

He was family. You can’t deny family. How would you start? I had grown up with him, more or less. He was my closest cousin. Sometimes one can question whether there is need for family, but they are the first ones who have your back when it’s against the wall. His banging of my door was too hard. It was bad enough I was late on my rent, now I was 3,500 shillings poorer. Wait, I had to give him money too, 5,000 shillings, gone. I knew the next morning I would be the talk of the flat. That guy whose cousin came a knocking at the ungodly hour of 3 AM.

He left. Yeah. However, he wasn’t done. The night was young and he had relatives. Lucky for them they had a gate which he could not cross and fences he could not scale due to poor coordination. Liquor tends to do that plus whatever mixture of herbs he had felt the need to smoke. I know we are supposed to go green, but… There some herbs that should not be used. The next day I received a call thanking me for my generosity. Yeah, you know I am kidding right.

A few weeks later, guess who goes to prison? Tony. Arrested for causing a disturbance and then he decides to make police officers his practicing dummy. Well, he became the dummy. Our officers know how to accommodate hooligans. He became a guest of the state. He had to wait for a psychiatric test before he went to court and was jailed for year. Lo and behold someone gave him a phone and he had memorized the numbers of his favorite customers. Imagine being called and you see the id of someone you know is receiving state accommodation.

The thing is what would happen if he got out. If he was behaving that way before he got locked up, could one fathom who he met on the ‘inside’ and how his retribution would be fierce if he was ignored. 3 AM!!! He was calling to get money for a comfortable stay with the state. He would ask whoever picked up his call. I waited for my time. He flashed, I called, and I would send the money; and waited for the next week. I had a budget book where I had an entry for his toiletries. His uncle was already sending him money, but he wanted to expand his money making horizons. He was just feeding his ‘greens’.

He is out now. He converted his religion to piss us off. He is finding it hard though. He can’t engage in his indulgences, but asking for money? I am going to move to the Himalayas.