Both are ambitious, strong headed, and, hopeless addicts. One is rich, and carries an inflated ego like a badge of honor even if he’s sinking in debts. The other is a poor brother from another mother who aspires for the good life but is struggling with poverty demons.
They live for today because tomorrow will take care of itself. The country has become one big casino and its raining money into eager pockets. Oodles of money to mess around with — until payback time.
The rich dude is into shady deals and shitty projects because he’s using other people’s money. Forever heaving and hurling the country into new depths of financial tyranny. The other chap may be a small-time trader with irregular income. A jobless young man, or, a college student. But their sights are trained on quick flash-cash dreams that are reverse-engineering poverty.
Take the case of Stano, a small-scale trader I met a few weeks earlier.
Stano, recalls the last moment at his business stall was noisy enough to draw a crowd of on-lookers in the early hours. Crushing sounds made the groggy-from-sleep and the groggy-from-pub, crowd flock to the scene expecting a crashed train from the nearby railway line. Only to find a gang of cops and menacing city council askaris manning bulldozers and some other monstrous shit.
He was roused at early in the morning just when the soft glint of dawn was creeping in. All of a sudden the still morning air was filled by distant screams, shouts, and squeals. The beastly hum of angry bulldozers roared in the background to the sounds of cracking mabatis and crunching wood. Mutindwa market in Buruburu, Nairobi, was being brought down. And hundreds of small traders whose sole means of survival was selling goods at the bustling Sonko Road watched helplessly. Goods and property worth millions were lost in this operation which was among city-wide government crackdown on illegal structures near roads, schools, and riparian areas.
Stano was lucky he managed to salvage his goods intact because he lived nearby. When he woke to listen to the commotion outside a friend sent him an urgent text message. Their stalls were being mowed down. It was still dark. The soft spray of morning rain an uninspiring sight. He was short of cash to transport his merchandise. No worries. He reached for his smart phone.
Tapping and swiping into one of his multiple mobile-money accounts he requested for a loan. Response was instaneous. A pick-up truck came over and ferried his possessions to a safe place.
Standing at the fringes of the demolition zone he was surrounded by curious onlookers watching the carnage. Hundreds of little pocket-sized businesses that brought bread to the table, a roof over thousands of heads, and money for school fees — were tackled to the ground and steamrolled to tinder by the hulking contraptions.
A man with tired eyes plunked next to Stano babbled to whoever would care to listen about his predicament. His goods were destroyed and whatever remained looted. Now he was in a dilemma. Apart from joining the league of millions of jobless Kenyans, he also had a wife and two kids to take care of. A few days earlier he’d replenished his second hand clothes business by borrowing from one of the numerous mobile money-lending services. But he’s not yet repaid. Stano, informed him of a simple way to weather this storm — obtain a loan from another mobile platform.
This money was to lessen his arrears with the original account while using the rest to cover him during this emergency period.
Meanwhile the traders’ loss was a ‘meal’ for others. Scrap metal dealers poured in scavenging packs and pounced at the blankets of iron sheetings, steel skeletons, and debris, salvaging whatever could be found and packing them in mkokotenis.
In moments the man registered into another mobile platform and his mobile wallet was minutes later electrified to life with a quick honking loan. They both laughed at their ingenuity. Previously the man had no idea one could do that. Stano, explained to him how he juggles multiple accounts that move him forward on bad days. Boasting sometimes he borrows for no reason. A spark of hope engulfed the other man’s eyes.
Unlock your growth potential!” “Pata mkopo haraka!” (get a quick loan), “Cashap!” are the catchy words and slogans hypnotizing millions of borrowers in this credit-mad country. Adverts are right on your face; from TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, social media pages, posters in neighborhood shops, and through word-of-mouth.
“You don’t need any collateral, any bank account or a referee, all you need to do is download the Android app and you will receive your loan in 10 seconds flat,” proclaims an advert by Branch, an online money-lending consortium headquartered in California that launched in Kenya in 2015.
Initially accessing a loan was for the privileged. You needed a car log book, land title deeds, ad infinitum.., as collateral for a loan. Intimidating majority of Kenyans.
Now all you need is a smart phone to open a credit and savings account to make a loan application in this paperless transaction. Mobile money has become a fair-weather brother for the struggling masses who include the middle class. Fifty mobile loan apps are mesmerizing millions who can’t imagine the ease of this novelty.
As is usual, the gangstas in fine designer suits aka banksters — who are known to offer people umbrellas when the sun is shining and taking it back when it rains — have not been left behind.
Commercial banks have dived in head first into this money-lending frenzy. The prospects are worth it. Mobile loans charge a higher interest than the Central Bank rates. Leading to a massive increase in predatory lending. Loans are dangled to borrowers who even can’t repay. It’s the US Sub-prime housing scandal all over again. Now this financing appetite by the financial sector is driving what everyone else is doing and the ordinary citizen has become a fly in the soup.
Loans are proffered from a low of 250 bob to a high of kshs70,000 depending on the financial institution. A quick perusal of customer’s M-pesa account is all that’s needed.
In case of an emergency it’s now easy to settle bills without resorting to selling assets. Children need not go to bed hungry. And hospitalization bills can be amiably sorted out. Some landlords I hear are forcing tenants to take a mobile loan from the digital shylocks if they are late in paying rent. The more you borrow the faster you repay the easier it is to borrow more until you reach the apex. One digital bank is lending up to Kshs 3 million (US$ 30, 000).
Nearly everyone is in love with credit until it turns sour. In this bandit economy the money-lending digital shylocks have fished 6.5 million borrowers drowning in a tsunami of high taxes and sky-rocketing prices of basic goods and services.
Now the digital shylock industry and its hordes of reckless borrowers depend on each other to the extent they appear a singularity.
The other dude (government) is a randy Billy goat. A morally bankrupt and intellectually inept horny goat addicted to ceaseless copulation with money lenders. Always on a roll as he pokes around for willing damsels who are actually angling for his attention. The shareholders watch from a distance like a herd of election observers. The best in bed is China which makes the Billy goat experience multiple orgasms whenever that name pops up.
Officially the country’s leading shylock, China, is into sweetheart single-sourced deals worth billions of dollars with hefty kickbacks. It does not matter that the chinku is out to exploit our people and resources.
This September the Billy goat government is heading to the Dragon’s palace to sign a new deal worth $3.8 billion for the grossly inflated SGR railway line. When this rail line is fully completed we’ll be owing the Chinese shylocks a total of $8 billion for this project that financial analysts long said was unviable.
Right from the time we were fooled we are an independent country in 1963, up to 2013, we had accumulated a debt of Kshs 1.749 trillion ($17 billion). Since the Jubilee (Billy goat) government came to power we have in the last 5 years racked up debts of KSh2.252 trillion ($22 billion) and the Billy goat is angling for more. This is despite the goat chewing a US$ 2.5 billion Euro Bond loan from the western shylocks that never reached our national coffers.
Our future has been sold by the Billy goat who delights in impoverishing the masses while making a tidy profit in the process. We are now financial slaves of China.
Their sex trysts in the open air are legend and it was bound to make the Ex jealous. She can’t take this romance any longer. Now the Ex who previously treated the Billy goat as an option wants to fornicate with him. The western shylocks are on a wooing mission and are falling over themselves enticing the horny goat with copious amounts of money.
Only this week the president was invited to the White House and given 100s of millions of dollars in deals. The British shylocks, not wanting to be left out have sent their PM Theresa May, to Nairobi to tango and seduce this randy goat that’s easily aroused when it comes to money.
The ballooning public debt has made the Billy goat government to increase taxes on basic commodities as it’s up to its neck repaying loans while cutting off development projects. Despite numerous warnings the loans-narcotic is proving too addictive to heed. Even the IMF resident representative’s warned our debts have reached “unsustainable levels.” He was shrugged off as the Billy goat snagged another US$ 2 billion Euro Bond loan recently.
Now the country’s parliament is sponsoring a bill to curb the Billy goat’s excesses. The bill will impose a debt ceiling for this country whose intellectual class feels it has already been auctioned. Our critical facilities are probably soon to be used as collateral to repay bills.
The average Kenyan creditor is no different. He doesn’t give a hoot how much interest is charged but how fast the money arrives into his mobile wallet. Like the Western and Chinese shylocks, our digital shylocks never bother to fully utilize information from the Central Bank affiliated Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) they give and give. Now the CRB is in shock.
Only three years ago, the CRB had 150,000 individuals in its blacklist. It’s now a mob. Half a million. In days gone by the CRB was used to blacklisting individuals owing hundreds of thousands or millions of shillings, now its blacklisting fellas on the red for non-payment of Kshs 500 only. These defaulters are blocked from accessing loans and remain on low credit rating for seven years.
Thousands of peculiar Kenyans have been shocked to find they’ve been blacklisted while applying for another ‘illicit’ loan. Even the financial analysts are warning people to be alert when dealing with digital shylocks. Some of these digital banks have apps that require payment to use. Others are pyramid schemes that ask members to recruit friends to obtain higher loans. Fake credit and saving schemes abound amid get-rich-quick scams that guarantee high returns without disclosing risks.
Most surveys show the proliferation of digital loan platforms has not improved lives. Instead, they have become the breeding ground for debt slaves who in some instances borrow to gamble or settle previous debts. All is not lost. At least a few debt slaves do get the value for their money by living within their means like the city’s mama mbogas.
Its 3am in the morning. A time the guardians of the tired night go to rest. The city’s denizens are still snuggled tight on their warm beds as a multitude of women awaken and begin tapping and swiping on their smart phones. Beeping sounds of incoming text messages bring smiles to this thousands of faceless faces.
For the next two hours, M-shwari, an online mobile bank, is at its busiest as mind-boggling transactions are rapidly executed. With their mobile wallet now bulging, these hard working women who feed the city’s denizens swagger out of their cozy beds and homes to the neighborhood bus stop. As they make way to the city’s wholesale markets to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables arriving straight from rural farms.
Late evening, between 8:30pm and 10:30pm, after they’ve sold their stock, another intense avalanche of transactions inundates M-shwari. After balancing their accounts for the day they repay these quick loans to be able to access new credit so they can start their day on a fresh slate the following morning.
the peculiar kenyan 