Rambo Bambo, Boom Boom

So, you’re going to laugh, and I’m going to hunt you down and kill you slowly, but up until the age of thirteen, I used to wish for magic powers every night before falling asleep. No, I didn’t check for a monster under the bed as well. That stopped when I was ten. Anyway, so it’s safe to say that I was quite obsessed with anything magical. I would even go as far as to say that I used to idolize that “Rambo bambo, boom boom” magician on KBC who would dazzle us with his little, colourful tricks and stories. I was amazed that someone could pull a pigeon out of a hat or make coins disappear. Imagine, whole coins, just gone!

Time passed and I grew older and less idealistic about the possibility of real magic actually existing. So I started reading about the application of practical magic. I read about the greats like Harry Houdini and Robert Houdin and a lot more. Before long, I started teaching myself small tricks with a crap little DIY Magic kit I had got as a present from some kind soul that took pity on my mislead ambitions.

Then I learned the word misdirection.

Every magician in the world trades with the currency of misdirection. A charismatic smile here, a grand gesture there and voila! A tiger appears as if from nowhere! Misdirection is all about controlling what the people see. It’s about distracting our goldfish focus from one thing to another without any real effort being made. The smooth transition of mind manipulation.

Now, every country needs its own circus. Ours comes in the form of our Parliament. And every circus needs its magic acts. Ours come in the form of Ministers of Parliament. Our politicians excel at their jobs as magicians. A wave of a hand and a thousand people die. A snap of a finger there and a hundred thousand people are instantly displaced. A wink of an eye and Ksh840, 000,000 vanishes without a trace. I bet the real trick was to fit all that money into one bag though but we all know certain politicians are good at packing stuff. Although they're usually rolling instead of stuffing.

Misdirection, it’s how our government works. Take a moment to think about it. The ostentatious, gold bearing, gun waving, fashionably inept Artur Brothers. The violence stemmed by the beheadings carried out by the Mungiki sect. All a way to keep the public engaged or scared while the political parties were plotting. And now the Ocampo6, merely scapegoats for politicians and distractions for the masses because they make entertaining news. The magician’s flair. The latest one being the increase in fuel price, the icing on the metaphorical shit cake they feed us.

I can just picture it now. Shadowy figures with gleaming eyes and wide brimmed smiles huddling in the dull rooms of our parliament building, while dark clouds inevitably loom around, whispering things like:

“Create a tangible problem that will affect mirrions so that they take the plessure off us.”

“But how?”

“Erementaly, my dear Wamalwa, Erementaly! We simply raise the fuel prices.”

“Ahh, then blame the problems in the Middle East?”

“Now you’re getting it. They’ll be too busy worrying about how to get home to realize what we’ve got planned.”

So we get engulfed by their magic tricks and we watch while they swindle our intelligence from under our prying noses. It’s not like we have a choice when it comes to matters such as fuel increases. Of course we’re going to worry. Raising the price of fuel has a snowball effect on the whole economy. It’s the catalyst. There was a time when magicians were considered to be the legions of Lucifer himself. And their penalty for practising magic was to be burned at the stake. I don't know about you but I say we should resurrect this ancient method. There’s no doubt that our politicians would give any other government in the world a run for their money when it comes to the art of misdirection. They’re just narcissistic thieves and liars at the end of the day stealing not only our money but also our attention.

And when your attention is stolen by the rohypnol of their perverse psychological prowess, you’re left on your back with your soft underbelly exposed and you’re vulnerable to the rape of your intelligence and wallet.

By the way, nowadays I’m used to coins disappearing. It’s just part of living with the magicians of Kenya.