I am a photographer. And as the Pokomos would put it, "bige mapicha ndo nkonde yangu" literally meaning photography is my shamba, my living. So, naturally when I was tasked to do a website for one of my clients on a relevant post, I needed an image of the bulging former MP for Galole Hon. Tola Kofa Mugava. To my surprise my entire search
on the Internet yielded nothing. Totally nothing. So I started wondering whether it was a conspiracy to ensure the old man leaves with no trace whatsoever. But to whose benefit would that be? So, with my social media prowess I posted a short message in twitter and Facebook thus:
" Just wondering how the entire Internet seems not to have an image of the former MP for Galole TOLA KOFA MUGAVA. Is this a conspiracy of some sort? "
Within no time my friend Hamzah Abdalla who lives in the diaspora unleashes the much needed image although he still needed to confirm whether he was the one I was looking for. Of course he was the one. How could i be mistaken for a person who was my English teacher at Hola Secondary school a.k,a HOLA BARRACKs in the '80s, my football coach, my referee, my discipline master?
I remember when he came to Nairobi in 1992 as an Mp he did not know Nairobi well so I was tasked by the late Jeremiah Dhadho of NHIF ("Profesa") to show him around Parliament buildings and "the city in the sun" ( I think calling it so under Sonko is an insult). For him, Garden Square became an instant hit. He used to say:
"Ami si gari na phano ni karibu na parliament. Sihaja kusukana Nairobi na ami ni mwalevu mzima" (I have no car and this place is near parliament, I don't want to get lost as an old man)
Throughout his 3-term tenure as an MP for Galole, Garden Square remained his favourite joint. What I did not like was his telling me to wait for him as he sipped his glass (no, glasses) of that thing made of barley at Kenya Breweries. Me being a teetotaler and as religious as i could be, that was the worst punishment he gave me. Not even the "six strokes of my best" as the students used to refer his caning could come close. Thinking about him and how he used to make us construct sentences. I will repeat it here:
1) He told me to wait for him. 2) I left for home. Now join the two sentences and make a sentence beginning with the words NO SOONER....