Working Hard Will Not Make You Money In Kenya Part 3

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Read Part 2 of this amazing real life experience.

Read Part 1 of this amazing real life experience.

I returned from the CID Nairobi area headquarters still numb with shock over the events of the last few hours—starting from the commando-like raid on my offices. But what was really worrying to me at the time was the fact that somebody was hitting me but I couldn't see him or her. How the hell do you defend yourself against such an invisible enemy?

The rude shock for naïve me was that after all the blood, sweat and tears that I had put into building up my business from zero into a daily five-figure revenue generating operation, it was clear that hard work was NOT enough. Not in this Kenya that we had created.

That to me was the most shocking of revelations. There is a popular saying on the street to the effect that Kenya iko na wenyewe, meaning that Kenya has its' owners and those owners are not ordinary Kenyans. They are the high and mighty and generally people from rich privileged families. And yet even the dirty tactics I was seeing I had heard about. We've all heard those stories about a multinational crushing a small indigenous operation the way you crush to death cockroaches on your kitchen floor. But I guess it is not the same thing as when it happens to you. I think there is always this thing at the back of one's mind that tells them that the story may be exaggerated and probably not even true. Naturally all that changes when it happens to you.

Many times I have been able to recognize the conflict this wide gap and difference between the two Kenyan tribes brings, right here in this blog. The two sides of the divide can never understand each other. People from privileged backgrounds who have never gone hungry one single day are convinced that slum dwellers that go hungry regularly are stupid. Or just don’t have business acumen. It does not cross their minds for one minute that those poor people are in the slums through no fault of their own.

I was brought up in a middle class family (the class that has since vanished in Kenya) and my father was a senior police officer trained in the old colonial ways who found it impossible to fit into the new corrupt ways of the young Kenyan nation and after over 30 years of service was forced out by political pressure (that is going to be my next story and I will tell it soon enough).

From my upbringing I was in an excellent position to see both sides of the divide. The stinking rich neighbors whose corrupt father also worked in the police but was "wiser" and on the other end of the scale, the poor cousins who lived in a part of town that was "stinking" whose father was probably stupid because he drunk all the time. And of course the people in that part of town were filthy. That is how I was brought up believing.

When I finished my A-levels and "romantically" opted to leave the comfort of my sheltered upbringing to make a life for myself from scratch, I was able to experience first-hand what life was like on the other side and to realize how wrong I had been.

For example I never realized that there were any pit latrines (they are actually too many) within the environs of Nairobi City and fairly close to the city center at that. I also did not know just how much of a struggle life can be when one is out of luck. I experienced all of that and I am extremely grateful for it because I am now able to understand the biggest tribe in Kenya today by far. The "10 million beggars" JM Kariuki lost his life for talking about. But the most dangerous thing is that most of the people who were previously in the middle class have rather suddenly sunk down into being beggars. Thanks mainly to corruption and government policy formulated to favor the already stinking rich privileged class.

But let me get back to my story.

My enemies changed tact and that was when I realized that I was dealing with professionals within one of the daily newspapers. The truth was that my new distribution system had "upset the apple cart" and this particular newspaper had thrived over the years by ensuring that "possible threats to their business" did not go very far. That was business and it was done in the same way in many other parts of the world.

To cut a long complicated story short, their attack that finally brought my business to its' knees was two-pronged. (I never saw it at the time but was only able to piece it together much later from the ashes of what was left of my business after they finished with it—and with the help of at least one insider who had later been forced to resign.)

Firstly they financed several competitors who produced something similar to my product in almost everything but name. These "competitors" convinced my vendors to cross over by offering to pay them a 60% commission. They then quickly implemented the second phase of the plan, which was to flood the town with cheap 10 bob papers that had all sorts of bizarre headlines written in glaring typographical errors. Bizarre headlines flooded the streets. Like; "Goat gives birth to human being" "10,000 to kill Pastor Muiru" and so on. To this day, the story that went round was that the original publisher of Update got rich and didn't care anymore, producing all sorts of shoddy rubbish. How could you convince them different when the vendors going round with leaflets and flyers were the same ones that sold the original quality product and they even told their customers it was the same product?

Later by some stroke of fate I was able to meet a former senior executive at the newspaper who was at the paper when all this drama was unfolding. The story he had to tell, really shocked me. He confided in me exactly what had happened including the miscellaneous account that had been set up for the sole purpose of putting me out of business.

By the time this well-orchestrated campaign was over, nobody in town wanted to see a 10 bob paper. Indeed in the minds of most Nairobians, a tabloid should not cost much more than Kshs 10 and is even over-priced at that price. This negative image against tabloid-style reporting is something that Patrick Quarcoo and company will have to find a way of overcoming at the Nairobi Star. But first (as a reader who says they are an expert in media advised in the comments area elsewhere in this blog) they have to find another printer other than the daily newspaper press who they are currently using.

I am grateful to God that I was able to make it through the aftermath of financial ruin that followed. One of my young children was diagnosed with ulcers, which I until that day I had never believed could touch youngsters. He has never been the same again. The collapse of my business couldn't have come at a worse time because I had also entered into a number of financial commitments, which meant that I lost everything. Most people just lie down and die and there are many examples of Kenyans I know who have done exactly that. Which is why it is a big miracle that I am still here.

As I sign off feeling somewhat relieved that I have finally been able to tell this sad story, let us get a few things right.

Hard work in Kenya does NOT make you rich, more often than not it will kill you instead.

Corruption makes you very rich in Kenya—at the expense of other Kenyans.

Coming from the right family makes you richer.

The poor in Kenya are not fools and neither are they stupid; they are just there because of circumstances and mostly because of corruption, bad governance and terrible, terrible government policies. Given the right opportunities many of them will do better than our current best.

It is for this reason that we must all fight for a real new beginning in our country that will give Kenya's largest "tribe" (the have nots) a genuine second chance. Like the second chance I could only get by leaving Kenya. We can't all leave the country can we?

The photographs Kumekucha feared to publish.

Horror of Kenyan with female sex organ sharing cell with men at Kamiti Prison

Are you a Kenyan? Do You love your country? Join in this noble campaign to change things. Do something instead of just complaining.

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