By Kiprotich Kirui
In about six payslips ago, awash with head-cracking hangovers, I have been giving my boss sleepless nights when he hears that I have had enough of his payslips, he would organize a big party to bid me.
This is because of a simple truth that in the first place, I have a face that is not amusing at all. I also have a habit of telling him things that sounds like a recitation of satanic verses.
Those satanic verses include telling P.K my boss that I would not commit suicide if my payslip is made colourful. I sound like a two-tailed devil when I tell him something in the effect that I am falling in love with the color of the new one thousand note.
The act of singing those unchristian things to my boss makes him feel like shooting my wallet dead instantly.
Other than shooting my wallet dead, I decide to kill it myself. I say very loudly that I hate the colour of his payslips. I say noisily things in the effect that I would rather walk on my head than work for him. That I want to quite in other words.
The kind of news brings smiles on the faces of the office occupants, P.K being chief smiler. Everybody cheers up to hear that I have untimely killed my payslip.
There is a cause of such celebrations. Occupants of the office know my borrowing habit. They also know that I usually don’t pay such debts. In other words, I owe all the occupants of the office a cigarette or two. Apart from borrowing, there are so many instances where their cigarette grew legs. They always point fingers on me considering that I am a broke chain smoker.
Presently, they have introduced another stupid habit of hiding those products of tobacco in their socks, far from my thieving hands.
As the smiles get bigger and bigger waiting for the day of my departure, there is a lot of organizing for what my workmates sadly calls farewell party. Which to me is a good riddance party. A party to thank me for going away.
With so many people wanting to see me take off, fellow workers do everything possible to buy me good riddance gifts. To make sure that I never come back anywhere near my computer or anything that could make me go back to the office, they buy me things that suggest that I should be small scale farmer in Kapkures Valley where my placenta was buried.
I end up with wheelbarrows, jembes, ploughs, pangas and other implements which would serve a better purpose in the hands of other beings who happened to come from the same womb with me.
My boss appoints himself as the chief speaker during the party where only poisons like soda and tea are served to annoy my throat and talk such things like how wise I am to have chosen to quit the business of being scribe and opting to be a peasant farmer.
He goes on to advise me that tea leaves are good fetching money in the market. He challenged me to join those beings who are in my father’s homestead and fight daily for dad’s rugged land reminding me how those beings have threatened to make him past tense for trying to sell the rocky piece of land. He then gives me a very big good riddance kiss on my bearded cheeks and announces that the company has graciously donated a watch to me.
In other words, he is trying to tell me that I never kept time while working for him and therefore, as I venture into farming, I should look at the watch to know when to milk a cow.
The man just stops short of telling me that cows hate the smell of beery mouth like mine and that I should do my future cows some favour by buying a very strong toothpaste.
After that, the whole part crew escorts me to the door to make sure that I am gone forever hopefully to the valley. As I reached outside, it dawned on me that I have two stomachs in my house that need to be filled. I start falling in love with my payslip again but spilled milk cannot be retrieved.
