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We were recently treated to much-needed comic relief by the county leadership of Nairobi, which awakened the Kenyan spirit of finding a joke even when the situation calls for tears.
This was the genesis of the tragicomedy: a confessed goon was appointed to the board of a leading hospital in the city by our so-called city fathers. The fellow, named Gaucho, appeared many times in local news in the last couple of years, inevitably beating people to a pulp.
He has been known to be the go-to person if a demonstration that the administration is not happy with needs to be broken up, and, of course, a few bones will suffer the same fate as the demonstration.
Even without any introduction, you would know this Gaucho fellow is made from a different kind of cloth: his chiselled face tells a story of someone who rarely entertains jokes; his jaws resemble the remnants of a roughly hewn piece of hardwood; his physique that of a village bully: in other words, his entire demeanour screams ‘I am a goon!”.
What followed the appointment was a melee of memes that left people in stitches. The creativity of Kenyans is something else. We had a good laugh. Until, that is, we all realised it wasn’t anything to laugh about.
When I first saw the appointment, I thought it was a practical joke. Or perhaps, with the creativity of our Gen Z, this whole thing was artificially generated. I was wrong.
This appointee has been on air, admitting that he is a goon, adding, as a kind of salve to his soul, that his ‘’goon’ days are over.
He admits that, indeed, he went to school, only that he didn’t go too far: he hit a dead end at class six.
To add insult to injury, the same hospital has a ‘doctor’ who is, well, not a doctor. Listening to her, one gets the feeling she’s in the same class (figuratively and literally) with our reformed goon.
I imagine a board meeting where the duo is busy trying to follow the proceedings.
I see the goon fiddling with his fingers throughout the proceedings since he cannot understand a word of what’s going on.
That is, until one of the agenda items listed as ‘doctors and nurses strike’ comes up for discussion. Here, he is a subject matter expert, having dealt with similar problematic issues in the past.
I see him requesting the board to draw some funds from the slush fund so that he can ‘counter’ the strike using his tried and tested means of hiring fellow thugs to clobber the medics senseless.
How can we allow such buffoonery to pass without even a whimper from the powers that be? Is this the calibre of leadership we want in our country?
That such an important position can be given to a confessed goon? What kind of leaders do we aspire to be?
There are at least ten million better candidates for this job, but they just happen not to know the right people. Neither can they be called upon to provide thugs to do their bidding.
Though, to be fair, this is not the first time this has happened. Even though we appear to have sunk to a new low with these appointments, this is nothing new in the country.
We have had appointments at all levels with people who are unreformed hoodlums, drug dealers, conmen, convicts, jail escapees, and even a murderer or two.
But somehow, we have all accepted such mediocrity and moved on with our middle-class lives.
We have also had some appointees to high office who brandish certificates from highly regarded institutions, but the moment they open their mouths, the reality hits like a ton of bricks.
At face value, they look like they might have some grey matter between their ears, but there’s nothing but a vacuous state of ether. Personally, I would prefer the goon; he just doesn’t know anything, rather than a Harvard graduate who spews trash in between lofty buzzwords designed to confuse the laymen in us.
-The writer is a communications consultant
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We were recently treated to much-needed comic relief by the county leadership of Nairobi, which awakened the Kenyan spirit of finding a joke even when the situation calls for tears.
This was the genesis of the tragicomedy: a confessed goon was appointed to the board of a leading hospital in the city by our so-called city fathers. The fellow, named Gaucho, appeared many times in local news in the last couple of years, inevitably beating people to a pulp.
He has been known to be the go-to person if a demonstration that the administration is not happy with needs to be broken up, and, of course, a few bones will suffer the same fate as the demonstration.
Even without any introduction, you would know this Gaucho fellow is made from a different kind of cloth: his chiselled face tells a story of someone who rarely entertains jokes; his jaws resemble the remnants of a roughly hewn piece of hardwood; his physique that of a village bully: in other words, his entire demeanour screams ‘I am a goon!”.
What followed the appointment was a melee of memes that left people in stitches. The creativity of Kenyans is something else. We had a good laugh. Until, that is, we all realised it wasn’t anything to laugh about.
When I first saw the appointment, I thought it was a practical joke. Or perhaps, with the creativity of our Gen Z, this whole thing was artificially generated. I was wrong.
This appointee has been on air, admitting that he is a goon, adding, as a kind of salve to his soul, that his ‘’goon’ days are over.
He admits that, indeed, he went to school, only that he didn’t go too far: he hit a dead end at class six.
To add insult to injury, the same hospital has a ‘doctor’ who is, well, not a doctor. Listening to her, one gets the feeling she’s in the same class (figuratively and literally) with our reformed goon.
I imagine a board meeting where the duo is busy trying to follow the proceedings.
I see the goon fiddling with his fingers throughout the proceedings since he cannot understand a word of what’s going on.
That is, until one of the agenda items listed as ‘doctors and nurses strike’ comes up for discussion. Here, he is a subject matter expert, having dealt with similar problematic issues in the past.
I see him requesting the board to draw some funds from the slush fund so that he can ‘counter’ the strike using his tried and tested means of hiring fellow thugs to clobber the medics senseless.
How can we allow such buffoonery to pass without even a whimper from the powers that be? Is this the calibre of leadership we want in our country?
That such an important position can be given to a confessed goon? What kind of leaders do we aspire to be?
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There are at least ten million better candidates for this job, but they just happen not to know the right people. Neither can they be called upon to provide thugs to do their bidding.
Though, to be fair, this is not the first time this has happened. Even though we appear to have sunk to a new low with these appointments, this is nothing new in the country.
We have had appointments at all levels with people who are unreformed hoodlums, drug dealers, conmen, convicts, jail escapees, and even a murderer or two.
But somehow, we have all accepted such mediocrity and moved on with our middle-class lives.
We have also had some appointees to high office who brandish certificates from highly regarded institutions, but the moment they open their mouths, the reality hits like a ton of bricks.
At face value, they look like they might have some grey matter between their ears, but there’s nothing but a vacuous state of ether. Personally, I would prefer the goon; he just doesn’t know anything, rather than a Harvard graduate who spews trash in between lofty buzzwords designed to confuse the laymen in us.
-The writer is a communications consultant
By Mutahi Mureithi