When I was granted the powers to read and write from a local institution of higher learning, I must have gotten the wrong message from the main chancellor of the institution who was also the big boss of all the armed forces and farmer number one.
Instead of going ahead to wield my newly acquired powers to exercise with thick dog eared books, I joined a construction site where I exercised my biceps instead.
The white collar jobs that I had so much desired were hard to come by those days, and that is probably a more accurate reason why I ended up in a construction site.
After sending blind job applications to all the companies that had a valid address in the yellow pages, I realized that white collar jobs were not forthcoming and I had to devise an alternative if I hoped to eke out a living.
I therefore joined a group of men who gathered at a local construction site every morning flexing their muscles with the hope of impressing the foreman that we could carry big stones up the scaffold.
The job demanded that I session with a plateful of ugali as part of my breakfast menu, and this was in sharp contrast to the kind of breakfast that I had dreamed of when I was looking for a white collar job that would have heavily featured oats soaked in warm milk and freshly squeezed juice.
Instead of a white collar, I wore tough khaki overalls and battle hardened safety boots. I covered my hair in a big woolen hat that was also supposed to double up as a safety helmet in case stones fell from above with the sole intention of cracking open my skull.
The experience is memorable, but one thing I liked about the job is that you got your wages every day. My pockets were therefore used to feeling the warmth of money each and every day of the month.
I therefore underwent a complete culture shock when I finally landed a white collar job and the first concept I was inducted into is that salaries are paid in arrears at the end of the month.
It was a near impossible feat to wait for a whole thirty days before pay day that was always delayed by as many as ten days in a bad month.
It therefore came as no surprise when I could no longer sustain the perpetual state of being broke and heavily burdened by debt owed to the landlord, butcher, Mama Mboga and anyone else that was brave enough to offer me goods and services against a promise of a deferred payment.
I remember one Friday when my pockets were so empty you could have heard an echo from a mile if I dropped a coin inside. Coincidentally the same weekend there was a visiting dancehall musician who was performing at a popular venue in the city and for the young people of my generation, it was a must attend. As if by an evil conspiracy theory, payday was so far ahead you could not see it with the naked eye.
Therefore Friday at exactly 2pm saw me at the payroll masters door looking all disheveled and wearing all the possible signs of a person who was likely to starve to death if he did not get a salary advance.
I filled the salary advance application form and put it in the paymasters in-tray. Being a Friday, he had hung his coat at 11.00am for an extended lunch and I was lucky if he showed up before 4.00pm. Most of the times he accompanied his lunch with a few bottles of a cold beverage that made his eyesight blurry and his speech slurred.
He arrived at around 3.30pm after I had worried myself to a near frenzy because I could not imagine how the weekend was going to look like without money.
It was not until just a few minutes to 5.00pm that he called me in. He continued studying my application form like a NASA scientist who had discovered a fundamental problem with the Pythagoras Theorem.
When he finally spoke, his words were cold and calculated. Despite his near inebriated state, he could remember that he had been receiving such an application from me every month for the last quarter, and each had a different reason code. In the first one, I had lied that I had bought broiler chicken and they were going to perish from malnutrition if I did not buy them quality feed. I had milked the chicken story in the two subsequent applications, and I was going for the final one. However he must have noticed that there was an inconsistency because the broilers should have been converted into stew or rotating chicken by now.
He leaned back and for the next one hour he and gave me probably one of the longest lectures I had ever received on financial prudence. After ensuring that I was thoroughly mortified and apologetic for my misrepresentation of my predicament, he signed the application and sent me to the cashier to receive the money.
I leaned a few hard lessons from the paymaster. Your salary is equivalent to a brooding chicken, and you should not disturb it else it will abandon the eggs and you will end up with no chicks after 21 days. Let them hatch, the chicks will help you to build the next avian empire.