Budget day

‘Its smoke’ I say to myself, ‘ black smoke or gray smoke like clouds from a shisha pie though stinging like a charred picture.’ But the woman next to me thinks its fog, from her expression. She pulls her cardigan over her soft brown breasts to cover her cleavage. She does not smell its choking feeling. She is used to Nairobi, she is used to the bellowing burnt out diesel from the 19/60 matatu. She’s used to the skyline glazed by cold of people and cold of fog. What to me is smog to her is everyday. The sounds the hoots, the radio blaring till my throat thumps like am getting a nervous breakdown, to her is normal?

To her the fact that a budget has been passed yesterday, a trillion, two trillion, three trillion… is normal? She sits there in her seat and waits for the conductor to ask for fare. And she asks, how much? And he says, fifty. And she pays. Its normal. I wonder, yesterday it was forty, tomorrow it will be sixty, last year it was a hundred. Why?

She does not ask herself questions. Life gives her and she takes it, and buys cardigans and stares at the smoke hanging like clouds over the concrete jungle above her and she sees Nairobi. It has changed you know, I have seen that from @kresearchers tweets. Nairobi during colonial days, in black and white photos. She probably has not so how can she see Nairobi tomorrow?

Am burdened with the need to see, the questions, but am not the only one asking questions. At least I find out. I can tell, you know, kind of telepathy. I see him and I take note of the creases on his forward he is asking questions.

His shoes are frayed at the hems where a repairer tried to sew back Chinese synthetic leather. He is a walker. There are a whole lot of them here. They do not look into the skyline when walking. They look at the ground in front of them and watch it unfold. They walk fast, as if hoping for their journeys end in this life. Maybe they ask questions, but what questions I wonder. Do they ask about the division of revenue bills, transfer of functions to counties, anticipation of taxing capital markets?

I do not know but I know this one is thinking about the price of keg. Yes he is thinking, yes, and asking questions about why they have to raised the price of the keg. All he wants is that they let him frequent that keg joint at backstreet. Where after toiling the whole day for a wage, he can sit back and sip keg from his tumbler. Lean back and savor the taste of insipid beer mixed with powder detergent used to clean the cups by wafting them through soapy water. All he wants is to suck at the butt end of a half cigarette borrowed from a friend. And he walks on hoping they have not made it so hard to get himself a keg jar. And he walks into the town at the same pace as our vehicle as we jerk along the traffic. Into the city of smoke. Waiting to eat us all up and belch us like smoke, cold like a drenched pavement.

So I sit back and think to my self I should probably blog about the budget. Maybe give an analysis of this and that, make projections here and that suggest recommendations or something. But hell, those who can read my blog probably have already seen an analysis of the trillion budget-read a whole day at parliament, in a five minute segment of their favorite news channel. Where an economist, preferably a CEO was called and asked what he thought about the budget, asked to talk about financing it and taxes and then a mostly on issues that had been of recent controversy. And as they flip through the TV channel… KTN ‘What do you..” NTV ‘…think about…’ Kiss TV ‘… the MP…’ Citizen ‘….Clamor for higher..’ K24 ‘…wages…’ the CEO/political scientist/banker/economist, answering as I would answer. And the MP laughing as they flip the channel, and they raise the wage bill, and the news repeats itself, and the woman in the matatu accepts and the walker wishes he was an mp when he gets at the end of his journey at a keg joint and the middle class I want to write a blog to #occupyparliament.

So I look outside the window at the middle class, trudging alongside the matatu with their Toyotas. Hooting angrily at matatus for dangerous driving. They try to avoid the reckless drunkards terrorizing the traffic threatening to scarp the paint off their Toyotas. And they are scared the beasts who do not care about the matatus they do not own will bump the Toyotas they do not own. The Toyotas they have acquired from loans they are yet to pay.

They are ached anxious in their Toyotas hooting angrily listening to radio blaring middleclass music, or classic fm, or easy fm, or kiss fm. And they hear as the comedians cum journalists who have left the comic stage to push journalists out of airwaves make fun of the budget allocations. And they laugh off for the comic relief. They are the ones who can ask questions I want to ask.

But what do they know save what the comedian joked about laptops and the billions it would cost, or what the CEO/economist/political scientist/banker said over news last night about the wage bill? And they too in their saloon cars, scrapping an eight to five week trudge along the morning chill hoping to get to town and park their vehicles at cost that will be read in a different budget that wont be comically relayed on radio or wont have the CEO/political scientist/banker/economist on news to discuss it.

I sigh. We enter Nairobi city. I alight. I join the millions trudging into the streams flowing like a jerky eddy through of the behemoth concrete jungle. And I put on a serious look, an important look as if am doing something important in life, over and over again each day.