Don’t Laugh at the Slumdog Millionaires: That’s You and Me

Last week’s report in the Daily Nation about the SGR ‘Slumdog Millionaires’ – the accounts of how the sudden windfall along the railway’s path has enriched and pauperised residents – was by turns comical, tragic and wholly expected. The story was on the land compensation in Taita Taveta, Makueni and Kilifi counties. Impoverished residents have received millions of shillings in exchange for the compulsory acquisition of their land, and in age-old Kenyan fashion, many have then gone ahead to squander the windfall, leaving them in a worse situation than they started in.

The stories will break your heart. A trusting widow who signs over the power of attorney to her son, who promptly disappears over the horizon to Mombasa as soon as the money hits the account. The young man acts in true Prodigal Son fashion, traipsing back home as soon as he squanders the money. Only this time there is no fatted calf awaiting him – only a mother who, while forgiving, is now hard-bitten and untrusting. There are also stories about sons waylaying fathers; as well as teenage daughters abandoned by a father who was last seen also disappearing over the horizon in the direction of the seashore.

Of course, this is nothing new for Kenyans. Just a fortnight before, we had read – again in the Daily Nation – the stories of landowners in Kajiado who had decided to cash in on the real estate bubble. This was pure comedy – a man who had been paid KSh 30 million on a land transaction decided to spend KSh 20 million of it on a Range Rover. Which he promptly damaged and whose KSh 300,000 repair bill he could not afford.

These stories join the long legacy of stories from the tea bonus (or bonathi, as more accurately known), where tea farmers in central Kenya disappear for weeks on end until they have wasted their earnings. Or livestock farmers who hole up in towns with millions of shillings after they have delivered their cattle to the slaughterhouses, even as their families starve and scrounge back in the village.

We may sneer at these stories, or chuckle condescendingly at the doings of ignorant villagers. But except for the amounts of money and the manner in which they receive it, the way they act is no different in nature and degree from which we sophisticates deal with money and good fortune.

For some reason, Kenyans are often stuck in a feast or famine cycle. Look no further than the cries about ‘NJAAnuary’ – the pun about the hungry first month of the year. It is entirely predictable that companies will pay employees early in December, to facilitate flush holiday seasons. It is entirely predictable, also, that school fees, insurance premiums, and sundry expenses will be due at the first of the year. It is entirely predictable that payday goes back to normal in January, meaning that we can expect to go six or seven weeks between paycheques. Yet Kenyans act as if this is the first year this has happened, after they consumed their entire salaries unthinkingly.

Think, as well, of the way in which entertainment spots fill up in the last week of every month, with every man there trying to outdo the other in boastful generosity, only for the bravado to shrink to sheepish whispers as the same men seek a ‘soft’ loan to tide them over for the remainder of the month.

Maybe this has its roots in Kenyan society. Most of us don’t have that much wealth to begin with. Life itself can also be capricious, with accidents, crime or illness snapping at our heels. Thus money, especially millions, comes as a shock to the system, and not spending it immediately seems to be the ultimate act of folly. The future is so uncertain, and the money so palpable, that it is almost a crime to leave it untouched.

Money in Kenya, we seem to have decided, needs to be spent at high speed and high volume. Women and girls need to be impressed, and thinking of the future is for suckers. Forward planning is a fool’s game, in which only naïve dimwits participate.

Some have said that it is a matter of lack of financial knowledge – that if we had someone teach us about how to manage money (whether that be parents, or the overburdened 8-4-4 system), we’d know what to do with it when it arrived. I’m not too sure about that notion. I don’t think it is currency that causes us to lose our marbles when it shows up.

It is part of the starve or burst psyche among us. It is what causes us to not know when to stop imbibing (especially when the drinks are ‘free’). It is what causes fabulously wealthy individuals to continue to grab as much public property as they can (and some private ones as well), even when they should be satiated. Impulse control is an alien notion.

So let the slumdog millionaires be. Because when you look into the mirror, there is one staring right back.

Also published in the Business Daily on 3 February 2015, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Dont-laugh-at-the-slumdog-millionaires/-/539548/2610668/-/item/0/-/pkmw7c/-/index.html