I have been following the teacher thing with a sardonic smile on my countenance. I am not in the least bit surprised to see those hapless teachers conned in broad daylight! A card sharper comes to mind, or in more Nairobi-like terms, pata potea! The audacity of one Education Minister adamantly and smugly informing the odd 20,000 teachers that there is no money and then proceeding to step into a S Class Mercedes so wide that the driver needs a pair of rearview mirrors is breathtaking!

I for one find this no money thing like a sadly battered record. There is no money to pay teachers, air traffic controllers, nurses, doctors, maize farmers and coffee farmers. However when other issues dear to the welfare of those Dishonorable gentlemen and ladies allegedly working for us come to light their speed in reaction and unanimous support is breathtakingly impressive. Let me remind you that these pillars of servitude to the nation that they:

Voted unanimously in some 15 minutes to increase their salaries by obscene amounts. The Kenyan MP is paid a handsome 480,000 shillings to arrive at parliament late, sleep soundly and sonorously at the benches and depart some 3 hours later, allegedly having worked. Imagine that! Half a million iron men to sleep! I wish I had a job like that!
Created for themselves an impressive insurance policy that ensures they get paid ever for stubbing a toe on their way to either of their bedrooms (at home and parliament itself)
Have ridiculously large convoys of very expensive vehicles at their disposal. While attending to some other business I counted that the presidential motorcade on a slow say has no less that 3 S Class Mercedes, 8 C Class Mercedes, 5 E Class, a sprinkling of BMWs, the odd Pajeros and some 8 BMW motorcycles. Not to mention the assorted older Mercedes vehicles as well as the standard police vehicles.

I could go on indefinitely but we all know our 'people's servants'. Which brings me to the issue at hand. A half (or is it quarter) baked individual presents his smugly oily face on television and announces that there has been set up a commission to look into the teachers issue. It took me some seconds to digest this tirade of hogwash before I was on my feet screaming at the television:

"Commission, commission? Commission? Wot the hey for? WHAT FOR? What will they find that the previous commission failed to find? Commission? Jesus save us from the fools that enslave us! The bloody man wants a bloody commission? WHAT FOR? WHAT FOR???!!!!"

It took quite some soothing talk to calm me down enough for the veins in my temple to return to their usual recesses and my heartbeat rate to halve. Someone held my hand, someone mopped my feverish brown and someone fed me pieces of sliced pear, fresh from the fridge. Someone else discreetly turned off the TV. With all this support sanity was secured and the twitch in my right eye disappeared. But I remained incredulous at the audacity at the people who I pay every month! The tax man takes a lot of my hard earned money in the guise of Corporate Tax, Income Tax, NSSF and other such nonsense that ends up paying the 480,000 bob of some slob who spends his day in the house on his backside belching, burping, farting and sleeping! Commission? What on earth will they find that the previous commission failed to find? All this silly exercise will serve is to further enrich some 10 enthusiastic MPs who will get a lot of money for doing nothing! I can save them the trouble of setting up a commission by very simply cutting to the chase:

THE TEACHERS WANT MORE MONEY!

In the famous words of that epitomization of all things Mafiosi "We don't need no stinking commission!"