Karibu Kanairo🏙️

A year ago around this date, my sister and I were house hunting on the outskirts of Nairobi (henceforth also referred to as Kanairo), looking for a house that met most, if not all, of our standards. Most were either too far from her place of work and my school, or were too interior with no connection to the road whatsoever. Or were too expensive by our then standards, or this reason or the other.

We were noticed to vacate my sister’s previous place coz the landlady apparently didn’t like my presence in the compound. She is completely anti-males in her apartments. Whether you’re the brother or father or husband or cousin, as long as you are male, she wasn’t having any of it. Somebody should remind her that men made those apartments😒! She hated males so much so that she was willing to forgo the rent money just as long as I didn’t visit my sister anymore. I always thought people do ridiculous things for money, but clearly I hadn’t met this grumpy old lady before. And narrating this story to a few of my friends they tell me most Nairobi landladies are like that.

I’ve already been warned about job hunting and how it wears out your shoes’ sole, but house hunting is right up there with it. We were tired and hangry. Pressure from the annoying old lady to vacate her house as soon as possible mounted up too. I bet you, she must have already had another tenant ready to move in at a higher rent than ours, coz I don’t think a male presence would make her want to kick us out that fast. So it was for the money, huh!

After weeks of hunting, we were at the point of desperation now! Drowning man clutching at a straw scenario. In this case, any straw that would put a roof over our heads would be welcomed with open arms. Any contact or advert of a house even far away from our area was now acceptable. And that was the tip of the back-patting to welcome us, mostly me, into this town.

We considered one of the contacts on a poster by the roadside. Dialed it, and the guy on the end received almost immediately, like he was waiting for us to call. After telling him we were looking for a house, he swiftly told us to text his number on Whatsapp so that he sends us pictures of the house he’s leasing. And the apartment’s photos were exactly what we wanted: a well sun-lit house, spacious balcony with a good view of the lush green plantations, bedrooms decked with modern closets, a spacious kitchen (you don’t see that often in Nairobi), and ceramic tiles to compliment the beautiful wall. This was it. This met our standards and more.

First sign that made me raise my eyebrow in wonder is that how come we didn’t see any house with such specifications around our area, yet the guy claimed this apartment was located around our area of residence.

Second and the most obvious sign that should have made us stop and realize we are being duped, is that this guy claimed he was a reverend. Yea, you’re thinking exactly what I am thinking.

Mr. Reverend now said he wants what’s best for us as sheep of God, (we really were sheep at that point. Sheep about to enter a slaughterhouse just for a little grass to eat). But, (of course, there’s always a but) there was already another lady who wanted to rent that same apartment and that she’d already paid half the deposit. So for us to secure the apartment fastest because end month was around the corner, we needed to fully pay the deposit then we’d be taken to the apartment’s location.

Oh, come on, nobody can fall for that, even if he were the Pope himself. Trust me, desperation can make you do things. The thoughts of not having a place to stay next month, with school and with work, and with an ever rising prices of food, in a county that is not of your people, with the nearest call for help for someone you are fond with is at least in the next county. Trust me, you would have accepted the offer too. We did try to convince him that we were at rock bottom then, and that we would only manage half the deposit after visiting the apartment. But the clergyman noticed the desperation in our voice, and snapped his moment. He used our desperation to convince us that the other lady was making serious moves to secure the apartment, and that one more second wasted negotiating the offer brought the other lady closer to sealing her deal.

So desperation won this round, and we quickly sent over 10k to a person we’d only started talking to less than an hour before, and waited for Mr. Reverend to hold up his end of the deal. As a measure of good faith, he called to tell us he’d received the money and that a pick-up truck would be with us shortly to take us to see our soon-to-be new home.

10 minutes. 30 minutes. An hour. Evening is here now. The sun is setting. A storm seems to be brewing up. Nothing. No call. No text. Where is that truck? We are very ready and eager to assess our new apartment. Is the apartment so far that it is taking the truck that long to get here? Sat by the roadside to wait, and tried calling Mr. Reverend to know where the pick-up truck was. Maybe he had mistook our exact location.

Now I’m starting to think differently of this “reverend”. Why is a reverend picking calls about tenancy. Shouldn’t he have someone to do that for him and he only receives the rent? Surely one of the ushers at church can help him with that. Now that I think about it, Mr. Reverend didn’t even greet us in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Or he thought we are Muslims? That wasn’t so welcoming of him. And now ignoring the calls of stranded ‘sheep’? That was now crossing the line!

And as the sun continued to set without a care that we were waiting for someone, and as the storm continued to brew up in the far distance, and as reverend completely put his line out of service, then, and only then, did it fully dawn on us..that we’d messed up. We had been washed by the Lord’s servant, but not by the blood of the Lamb. No, no, no. We had been washed clean of our hard-earned money and subtly reminded that Kanairo is no one’s home, not even Reverend’s.

You probably knew early on that we’d been duped, but we didn’t. We weren’t reading the scenario from the comfort of a roof over our heads. We were in the scorching midday sun, hungry, wobbly legs fixed on worn out soles, desperate, exhausted!! We put our little flicker of hope on a ‘man of God’ but clearly everyone in Kanairo is out to make a living. Nobody’s here on vacation.

That night we were so amazed, so shocked, to even eat. Each of us lay deep in the night, accepting our fate. “So that’s how they do it! Doesn’t even take much effort, does it?” All efforts to trace the man of God obviously didn’t work. C’mon, we don’t even have a well functioning government, you think investigators will function?

And to think Mr. Reverend’s number is still on that electricity pole by the roadside, and someone else, probably new to the scene, will call it and the cycle will be complete again.

Aaaah, Kanairo..and that’s not even your worst😅. I guess you really have to live it to believe that it can happen to you.

Have you ever been conned/swindled? Not only in Nairobi, but anywhere? Please do share your story in the <reply> to this article😁. After all, forewarned is forearmed.

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Have a wonderful week ahead!

✍🏽Reagan.

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