Grand Theft Tree!

(Not another save the Mau plea. Though it does bug me.)

Mtoto akililia wembe mpe.

So said the wise guys who were chilling by the beach as they watched a stubborn 5-year old almost butcher himself with a razor blade. The mother wasn’t too amused by that wise crack.

Moving on.

We prayed. We sacrificed. Actually we didn’t but if it were the times of Moze we would have. We were desperate. We were not going to be picky. We’d take anything. So evidently the big guy up top, either coz he was fed up of us heathens manically crying for rains, he unleashed some nasty storm upon us.

It was the el-nino that the weatherman had predicted (for once), the very one we had chosen to settle for seeing that the rains, well, let’s just say they wouldn’t shed a drop for us.

Building roofs were blown off. Mabatis everywhere. Cars were washed away. Some humans too. Billboards bore a message of mass destruction. Trees too, just like their cousins in Mau, were going.

Water water everywhere except in that damn dam, which quenches and sheds light on us thirsty in-the-dark Nairobians.

I must say devastation was everywhere. But for some guys, give them a lemon, they gon’ make lemonade.

Marto is one of these guys.

Now Marto was huko cruising in the mtaani dodging trees and flying cars, when this monstrosity of a tree fell where many could hear. And yep he got to hear of it too.

Come the next day, as guys were taking stock of the damage, and kanjo was huko wekaring kando trees that were not chonjo, Marto got his power saw, jumped into his Canter (that’s what we call all ‘pickups’ that are not as small as kawa pickups and not as big as trucks) and zoomed off in the direction of the fallen tree aforementioned.

He’s a chapchap dude. He calculated that before kanjo could mobilize guys from arresting Nairobians for sneezing, he’d be done with that tree. He arrived fast, much to the delight of the neighbourhood. Funny, each resident thought a kind neighbour had okoad jahazi and placed a call to kanjo concerning the fallen tree.

We will never know.

Cutting a short story even shorter, Marto proceeded to cut up the tree, with the highly appreciated assistance from the residents, into manageable pieces. He then loaded them onto his ‘canter’. He thanked them plus for good measure threw in a good word for kanjo.

“Tuko hapa kuwasaidia. Kumbukeni kanjo iko chonjo”

The people cheered.

And with those few words Marto drove off with a stolen tree.