A year ago around this date, my sister and I were house hunting on the outskirts of Nairobi (henceforth referred to also as Kanairo). Looking for a house that met most, if not all, of our standards. Most however were either too far from her place of work and my school, or were too interior with not much connection to the main road, which was one of the standards. Others were too expensive, or one reason or the other.

We were told to vacate my sister’s previous place because 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 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. When I narrated this story to a few friends they told me most Nairobi landladies are like that.

I’ve already been warned about job hunting and how it wears out your shoes’ sole. House hunting is right up there with it.

After days of searching and trekking treacherous Kabete terrains, my sister and I were tired and hangry. Pressure from the annoying landlady to vacate her house as soon as possible started to mounted up. I bet you, she must have already had another tenant ready to move in at a higher rent than ours, because 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, was now acceptable. Desperation lowers ones standards. That was lesson one in this town: don’t be desperate.

But we didn’t know why yet.

We considered one of the contacts on a poster by the roadside. Dialed it, and the guy on the the other end received almost immediately, like he was waiting for us to call. We told him we were looking for a house, fast, and he swiftly told us to text his number on WhatsApp so that he sends us pictures of the house he’s leasing. The apartment’s photos were exactly what we wanted: a well sun-lit house, spacious balcony with a good view of the lush green Kabete 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. It satisfied a certain part of our desperate souls only similar to finding water in a desert.

Only it was a mirage.

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 were 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 God’s sheep, (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 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 pay the full 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!

But as I said, desperation makes you do things.

The thoughts of not having a place to stay, with school and with work, 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. You would have accepted the offer too.

We did try to convince him that we were at rock bottom then, 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 that round, and we quickly sent over 10k to a person we’d only started talking to less than an hour before, and waited. Patiently. Desperately. Anxiously. Waited for Mr. Reverend to hold up his end of the deal. As a measure of good faith, he even 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 in the far East.

Nothing.

No call. No text.

“Where is that truck?”

We were 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.

Soon I was 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. Or a deaconess or something.

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 were Muslims? Or Buddhists? That wasn’t so welcoming of him. And now ignoring the calls of stranded sheep? That was now crossing the line!

As the sun continued to set without a care that we were still waiting, as the storm held 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 been duped!

That we’d messed up. Conned by the oldest trick in the book. 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 had 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 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? Just a poster on an electricity post and a few gullible people.”

All efforts to trace the man of God from the police station 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, probably in many many places all over town. And someone else, probably new or just ignorant to the scene, will call it and the cycle will be complete again. The Reverend would be completing yet another baptism by fire, him getting richer, society getting wiser.

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, anywhere? Please do share your story in the <reply>. After all, forewarned is forearmed.

Reagan..✍🏽