When you break your back to pay taxes so that government runs smoothly, you do so knowing that the person responsible for keeping your money is not only as prudent as a beggar’s child, but also as honest as a bathroom mirror.
We send our money to the Cabinet Secretary for Treasury because we trust that his office locker is tighter than a poor man’s belt, and that his fingers aren’t itchier than a caveman’s dandruff.
In an ideal world, even those who pluck money off trees carefully vet those they entrust with balancing their books.
This is because when you open your wallet and hand over a portion of your sweat to the National Treasury for public use, you do so because you love your country and you trust those managing your taxes also love it the way you do.
When you trust someone to collect your money for everyone’s use, you do so not because you couldn’t collect it yourself, but because their parents sold a lot of cows to send them to economics school, and you trust they did not sell those cows to take another cow to school.
When we tweak the education curriculum to conform with the changing times, we do so knowing that those at the National Treasury also need updated ways of keeping our money safe – out of the mattress and into the computer.
During these painful economic times, no one would share their hard-earned sweat with those who don’t have if they knew their money was going to end up in a personal safe deposit box in an offshore bank.
Kenyans have been demanding for honest National Treasury officials because we know that money is a tempting thing to have.
Money can open doors even where there are only windows. Money will instal an automatic spring in your step even if you’re wearing flat shoes and you’re religiously watching your height.
Money will even kill you with excitement one minute and resurrect you with reality the next, because where two or more bank notes are gathered, the power of life and death is there with them too.
Money is the greatest human invention after the seedless avocado fruit. Those who don’t have it are often told to speak up no matter how loudly they are already shouting, because money comes with undivided attention which poverty can only dream of.
The only people who can stop reggae when they walk into the club are those with unlimited cash in their wallets – and that reggae will be forced to negotiate even when it wasn’t in the wrong.
When you have money, you don’t need a power generator for your air conditioner because banknotes will act as your fan and they won’t contribute to your carbon footprint.
But, money can also be a bad thing to have because it cannot buy you a brain. Money will not tell you when you’re violently breaking into the public purse and robbing the taxpayer to their bare bones.
Money will fail to raise the alarm about the noise outside your office window calling for your head on a platter, even when the layer between you and an anti-corruption protester is thinner than a used toothpick.
Money will trick you into believing that you can build the Arror and Kimwarer dam inside your stomach and that your mouth won’t betray you when the floods of evidence begin to hit your stomach walls.
Money will only shout when its life is in danger and you’re about to wash it for new currency against the government’s directive that you should take it back to the bank.
Money will keep quiet when the police have surrounded your premises and you’re about to be arrested, because when stolen money sees the police, it knows that help has finally arrived and freedom is here at last.
One cannot describe the level of hurt you feel after dutifully hiving off a portion of your monthly earnings to help other Kenyans repay the China loan, only for you to hear that your money was carted away in sacks to be buried in an unmarked grave halfway around the world.
It is painful seeing your hard-earned money being abused by those who should be taking good care of it.
