By the Idler-in-Chief
Here in Nyagenke, we have learnt to measure politricks not by the yardstick of truth, but by the springiness of tongues.
This wisdom was freshly confirmed last week, when Doktari Timua of Jericho, a man who insists on introducing himself with the full title, “Doktari,” even when only buying sukuma mwaka at the market staggered into Nyagenke Chambers of (In)Justice seeking redress.
Timua had been timuad in Jericho using an alien system of voting, one that did not involve the holy art of queuing, which we consider democracy’s altar in Nyagenke.
If you didn’t know, the Nyagenkeans queue to buy bread, fetch water or even hear lies at campaign rallies.
But in Jericho, they had imported some machine that clicked, tallied, and spat numbers without even the courtesy of a dust-raising queue.
So Doktari Timua, clutching his impeachment papers like a man holding divorce letters he refuses to sign, came to our chambers to plead for justice.
And that is when the most comical wigs; the learned, briefcase philosophers and toothpick professors of jurisprudence went to work.
They fought for Timua and against him, often at the same time, depending on who had last paid the lunch bill.
Two witnesses stole the show. First was Man Pepe, who climbed the witness stand like a saint ascending to heaven.
“I have never allowed the lion’s tears to graze this tongue,” he declared, stretching it for emphasis like a lizard on a hot stone and added, “I am sure heaven’s gates will swing wide open for me.”
The gallery clapped not for his piety, but because he had unwittingly confessed that his only sin was the lethal pride of being sinless.
Next came Man Zango, who was probably a philosopher of half-truths.
He declared, with the confidence of a rooster who has never seen soup, that he did not vote for Timua’s impeachment.
Switching tongues like a serpent flaking skin, he tossed into Kijericho, a thunderous language reserved for warning lying witnesses who hide behind Bibles.
“The thunder is rolling from Jericho Hills toward Nyagenke!” he rumbled, as though he was auditioning for a weather forecast job on Baba na Mama Television.
Most Nyagenkeans could not make sense of Kijericho and some thought he was summoning rain, while others swore he was auctioning goats ahead of Xmas.
In truth, he was afraid of swallowing his tongue while engaging it in Kinyagenke, the language of transacting business in Nyagenke, yet he was not sure if his SHA could cover such an emergency.
It turned out that honesty does not walk on two legs but limps and often collapses before reaching the chambers.
When toothpick professors are paid, truth becomes negotiable and witnesses boast of spotless tongues, while others thunder in foreign dialects, and truth becomes ornamental, displayed only when convenient.
Between Pepe’s heaven-bound abstinence and Zango’s thunderous denials, it became clear that Doktari Timua’s fate was not to be decided by facts but by the theatrics of Nyagenke chambers.
One could almost hear honesty being led to the slaughter, bleating faintly and the cruelest joke is this: even Man Zango, with his booming threats and foreign syllables, may not have been telling the truth.
Truth is like a coin flipped in the air and whichever side lands up, someone will still swear it was tails.
So Doktari Timua’s impeachment trial was a theatre where the audience laughs, claps, and forgets that the script was written in advance.
And as we shuffled out of the chambers, we agreed on one thing: if honesty were ever to run for office here, it would be impeached before it could even queue.
-babahezel@gmail.com