Compound sentences. Perfect syntax. Perfect diction. Lofty vocabulary. These are not things you find in quotes by your regular people on the street. Yet, a story in the last Saturday Nation had all of them. Meaning? Authenticity of all those quotes was suspect.
“How gangs killed enterprises in Murang’a,” said the heading of the April 24 story by Mwangi Muiruri.
The story was about how gangs hold sway in Murang’a county, robbing, maiming and even killing budding entrepreneurs.
It started out with the example of a man whom, after scoring a D+ mean grade in KCSE and failing to enter into the police force, resorted to saving Sh50,000 over three years to invest in small-scale poultry framing.
According to the story, the man said: “My projection was practical since I needed Sh30 to have a day-old chick – Sh10 for a fertilised egg and Sh20 for the incubator. I planned for a stock cycle of 200 chicks, which I would rear for a month at a cost of Sh17,000 and sell them off at Sh200 each to rake in Sh13,000 in net profit each monthly cycle.”
Now, we’ve met few Kenyans who can speak that kind of compound sentences, complete with perfect mathematical equations. Example, PLO Lumumba. We’ve met none who scored a D+ in high school and is peddling chicken in the bowels of Murang’a. Just doesn’t add up.
The next quote attributed to the same man confirmed our suspicion. After paraphrasing how a gang of 10 youths raided the failed chicken farmer’s Murang’a home, the story quoted the man again:
“That’s how I lost my script to riches and went back to my menial jobs, where I have not been able to accumulate any meaningful capital since my responsibilities increased when I got married in 2018 and got twins [now] aged two years.”
Now who in Kenya speaks like that, especially after Form Four? In what language did he speak?
Next up was the local ward representative. The story quoted him saying: “”We have this challenge and our people have come to appreciate the fact that security is a key factor in wealth creation. We are now associating the insecurity that has periodically affected our region to the prevailing poverty levels. Many youths would have been meaningfully engaged but, at some point, their startups and dreams were shattered by marauding gangs.”
Dreams shuttered by marauding gangs, huh? The MCA said that? Verbatim? In English? In a verbal question and answer interview or in writing? The story didn’t say.
