The Businessman

The Businessman
Kimathi Mutegi
See those six mean looking, black exhauster trucks packed over there? Those are my babies. They ain’t spoilt, silly. Just nocturnal. Work at night, that’s what they do. I also have seven canter trucks that go around collecting your garbage. Like to think myself as a hygiene executive, a self made tycoon.
I will tell you why I have grown so quickly in this business. I am cheap my friend. If my competitors are charging ten grand for an average septic tank job, I will charge eight. Slow down, I will give you my number at the end. The only requirement is I do the job in the evening, preferably under cover of darkness. I will tell you why.
As a businessman, I have had to devise strategies to beat not just my competitors but also the system. Why would I spend so much on fuel taking your filth to some treatment plant far away then spend some more once there? Why? It is a question that bothered me a lot when I owned only one tiny exhauster a few years ago. Then I discovered that I didn’t have to. There is wonderful, beautiful darkness and a lot of rivers that could gladly accommodate the crap, free of charge. It was a eureka moment for me.
So I painted my truck black so that it merges with darkness and was able to charge less than my competition. I would take your @#*#, charge you very little, drive to a spot that I know on this river, empty there and everyone would be happy. I went on and within two years, I had four large exhauster trucks.
Then I decided to diversify my trade in hygiene and bought an old five ton truck for collecting garbage. This proved to be another God-sent idea. I did not and do not spend on permits and fuel taking my trucks to Dandora. Oh no. I did not dump the garbage in rivers either. I got another ingenious plan.
I looked around and there are a lot of open grounds, government pieces of land lying idle. So what I do is sneak the trucks into any one of them at night, dump the waste there, free of charge and set fire to it, get rid of the evidence. Creates a hell lot of smoke, I tell you.
There is this my favorite place along old Naivasha road, a former dumpsite. I am told that the area is now permanently smogged, so much that sometimes, drivers have to switch on their fog lights in the morning. I am also told that the residents in the area have been heard complaining about the potentially poisonous fumes from the fires. I tell them to zip it up and let me make my buck.
In fact, I heard that they talked to this NEMA body to intervene, the haters. What they do not know is that I talked to the same people as well and my conversation with them was ‘more interesting.’ In fact, I have talked to the council and everyone else that matters. My advice is this, get used to it and if you can’t, then move.
‘Shame on me’, is what the Christian in me just said but that won’t buy me that plot I am eying, will it?