Pursuit of Happiness

Five o’clock was approaching fast and as an instinct he impatiently looked outside from his fifth floor office window at a security guard frisking random men and women coming into the building. Maybe it afforded him a sense of security against the Al Shabab, he thought, but then again with James McCormic’s golf ball detectors being used as bomb detectors he might as well just leave life to chance, those noisy toys cannot detect nothing. He lit up at the sight of one security guard running around a vehicle with a mirror who could not probably tell the difference between a bomb and all the metal parts beneath the car, and he didn’t even check the boot, that could be a better hiding place, and what would he even do if there was a bomb, run perhaps. There was a time, when a door was a just a papyrus reed mat drawn over the door like the stone at Jesus tomb his uncle had once said to him. Now we need metal detectors that do not work, security guards who are clueless and more probable of flight than fight, governments that are more likely to kill us than protect us and locks that are more likely to be breached so that we can buy the new improved lock, he thought to himself pleased by the thoughtfulness of his analogy.

He looked back at the time, it had not moved, neither had the work he was supposed to do. He crumpled up the papers and decided snugly that he would work from home which he knew so well was an impossible feat considering all the hustle it would take to get home. He carried the work anyway and opened a face book page on his work PC to kill the time. All of his virtual friends were on Facebook incidentally, updating nonentities probably all of them killing time like him waiting for the five o’clock magical hour.

He had watched a series about the 8 to 5 idea, credited for America’s great industrialization that saw Clock punching seen as an efficient maximum input, minimum cost way of achieving maximum production. With over half of the city workers on Facebook all afternoons waiting to punch the clock at 5 without necessarily making input to productivity, the idea seemed delusional, he thought.

He looked again at the time and saw the magic of number five. He sprang up to action. Packed everything in a hurry and darted out of office. He flushed feigned courtesy around of how he hoped to see every pitiable face in the office the next day while wishing it was a Friday so he could avoid their communal miserable eight to five wait.

He poured out of the office like children after the school bell rings. Millions of people, thousands of cars all into one small city headed home in one impossible rush all at five o’clock like a penchant for the effectiveness of the eight to five ‘clock punching’ American industrial age system.

***

She had left her office earlier than usual, she was not a fan of the constantly clogged transport arrangement that all employed people had to face. Probably that was why she had chosen to be self employed. But all the rosy pictures of mama mbogas smiling from billboards sponsored by banks proclaiming the glory of small business told half the story. In fact she was avoiding the owner of the tiny office she had rented and had not serviced her loan in two months. She wore a worried frown that perfectly made her gel into the worried lot that was always walking along the city streets. Today she had decided to take a train, it would be faster but she had to go early and secure a seat.

She walked past a stack of books and stopped to get one to pass the time reading on the train or on the jam the next morning. ‘Rich Dad...’ ‘How to succeed...’ ‘Believing in a better you…’ ‘Breaking the limits…’ she could not choose from the array of borrowed philosophy bundled in quick fix inspirational literature. Aaah, she saw something about costs. She has been struggling with that. Or should she take the one on a more efficient management, or getting the best out of the employees, or the God ones that always had the best solutions without actually offering any solutions. She bought the one with something about a purpose in her life, just next to the one on ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’.

She took her copy and paid the hawker who was eagle eyeing the City council askaris, a problem he could not find solution to in his many wise merchandise. She joined back the flows of millions rushing out of employment at five o’clock as if the rush would magically reward them with reaching home as early.

The traffic policeman was waving traffic at the railway station round-about gesticulating contradictory instructions to the traffic lights. The crowd she was with, flew into frenzy when he ordered the cars to his right to stop while the traffic lights gave them a go. A wild porter from the opposite side rushed towards them with his metal wheel burrow like carrier. They all flew to let him pass save for a slow oldish man. The porter halted angrily in his tracks, shouting at the man to be watchful, holding the oldish man in the same contempt as she was for slowing her by walking in front of her like he had all the time in the world. The oldish man moved to the side ungrudgingly dragging his lame leg that was the cause for his inability to keep up. She walked away guiltily as did the porter whispering sorry inwardly with the fear of a similar affliction rather than to purge the contempt they held him. She half trotted, half ran to get a seat at the train station.

***

He had ran all the way to the train and for the first time this week he had caught a seat. He settled at a green coach adjacent to a brown one that was more of rust than intentional colouring. He flapped the edge of his shirt for some cold air as sweat stung his armpits. He would buy that nivea stress sweating they keep advertising on TV but would it stop the stinging sweat from all the running to catch the train, he thought to himself.

‘Brayo,’ she called out, ‘is  this really you?’ He turned and was looking at Njeri, they had been at school together.

She had always thought he would make a good Managing editor at a big Newsgroup, probably international one back at college. He was sure she would have been a CEO herself probably of a company of her own.

‘What, Njeri? How have you been?’ he asked her knowing she was not that big CEO after all, why would any successful person take a train to Eastland’s instead of joining the motorcade towards Westland’s.

‘Am good,” she lied acknowledging that he was not that successful either. She asked what he was doing.

He was employed at a firm in upper hill, a well paying job that was growing and opening up. He was doing well. He lied, he was at a contract in his current job that paid little and worked the hell out of him, and he hated his job and pitiable life all together.

She countered that she had her own business, self employed, she said with an air. Her company was also expanding rapidly, she added handing him a business card with the title of executive which was perhaps the only good thing about her business that was running to losses, hardly got jobs and hounded by loans.

And as the train left the station at 5450 ft above sea level, Nairobi stooped from the tall skyscrapers, knelt at the lanky down town and lay low at the sprawling slum that shrunk away to Eastland’s like the lie they had to live each day, in the pursuit of happiness.