By the Idler-in-Chief
If the gods of Nyagenke ever wanted a theatre, they needn’t look further than our campaign trails.
Forget drama, forget comedy; what we have is a fully-funded spectacle of steel, fuel, smoke and dust.
The election bell is far from ringing but the Nyagenkeans have already been invited to line up, clap, ululate, and swallow promises with no water.
The king, that man of many vows known in bar talk as Mr Solutions, has returned to the stage.
He is the same fellow who swore to fix everything but instead perfected the art of breaking what was working.
He is back, wagging his finger like a stern headmaster, and promising to complete “unfinished work.”
This is a polite way of telling us: I built the problems, now re-elect me so I can pretend to fix them.
This week, Mr Solutions drove his campaign caravan deep into the hinterlands of Nyagenke, where potholes are not just potholes but open-pit mines capable of swallowing a Prombox with no possibility of vomiting it.
You see, while the peasants of Nyagenke push bicycles loaded with tea leaves and bananas, their (mis)leaders campaign in automobiles with hips so wide, they need their own postal codes.
It was on such a road; sorry, trench, that the gods of satire intervened on Tuesday.
One of Mr Solutions’ celebrated guzzlers, swollen with ego and raising dust that blinded my kinsmen, suddenly lost its manners.
It somersaulted like a drunken gymnast, rolled a few times for emphasis, and landed in the kind of gully newspapers call “a ditch” but the Nyagenkeans call “a government project.”
The convoy behind, packed with equally gluttonous machines, had no chance.
At the speed of lightning they kissed each other’s rear-ends, their haunches dented and deformed.
It was an international miracle!
For once, the potholes of Nyagenke had claimed a noble victim: extravagance itself.
But don’t worry as nobody important was hurt, except perhaps the taxpayers of Nyagenke, who now must foot the bill for new rumps, new paint, and maybe new guzzlers altogether.
And here lies the joke so big even a Nyagenke pothole cannot swallow it: the resources that went into that convoy could fix half the emergencies strangling our people.
The health centre still has no medicine, children are learning under avocado trees whose fruits are bigger than their heads, and the bridge to the market has been “under construction” since Adam’s rib was extracted to form Eve.
Yet, in the kingdom of Mr Solutions, priority is ensuring that the buttocks of campaign vehicles remain round and glossy.
The latest update is that Mr Solutions has declared that in the next election he will personally campaign for his fiercest critic, Manengo.
Meanwhile, the dis(united) opposition is busy assisting content creators to achieve the next upload on TikTog and other platforms.
Nyagenke Electoral and Fences Commission is yet to get its act together, and, the Nyagenkeans, sponsored by empty stomachs and bribes, may once again queue to rubber-stamp the very hand that messes their pockets.
But my kinsmen and women are a patient people and deserve a mention in the Guiness Books of Records.
We cheer as guzzlers zoom past and open our mouths wide to consume the dust, we clap as promises fall like dry leaves, and when potholes eat a car, we don’t cry but thank the gods for reminding us that roads don’t discriminate.
You see, a pothole doesn’t care if you are a king, a critic, or a casual pedestrian but simply swallows whatever rolls over it.
Unlike our (mis)leaders who dish projects that hardly take off, a pothole doesn’t discriminate: it greets bicycles, guzzlers, and wheelbarrows with perfect enthusiasm
Until next week, I urge the Nyagenkeans to keep their feet steady, their patience intact, and their laughter loud.
After all, satire is the only promise that is not fake.
-babahezel@gmail.com