Woman “Pays” For Stealing Scratch Cards

Corruption is a vice that is in the very fabric of the Kenyan society and Kenyan who find themselves in a position of responsibility will tend to think of it as good fortune and their turn “to eat,” just like our politicians do.

This is exactly what Rita did but with rather disastrous consequences.

Rita was married with 2 children and lived in a well known Nairobi estate (name with-held). She could not believe her luck when she landed a job distributing cell phone scratch cards. She hurriedly shut down her small mboga kiosk in the estate which was bringing her more headaches than income to concentrate on the lucrative new job. And things got even better. Apart from a basic salary of Kshs 10,000 she discovered that she was also to get a commission if she hit her targets for scratch cards sold. It was easy because there were already established clients and she had to do was persuade each client to take a little more than usual and she would surpass her target by far. Her total take home package amounted to about Kshs 30,000 per month which is not much money in Kenya these days but Rita had never handled such money in her entire life time.

But things got even better. About a week into the job, a fellow sales lady introduced her to a certain “deal” that was going down in the place. They would distribute stolen scratch cards and get a hefty commission. So apart from her salary, Rita now had cash that was coming in daily. The racket was really an elaborate scheme where she stole from her own employer.

Things could not have been better for Rita and her lifestyle changed suddenly and very dramatically. The cold and strictly vegetarian household was now warm with meat being eaten every day. Nobody was suspicious that there might be anything wrong. After all everybody knew that Rita “alipata job fit sana.” The house that never used to see visitors now suddenly had too many of them. Many new-found friends came for small “soft loans” and word quickly spread that whatever time of the month it was, you would never miss cash at Rita’s house.

But as they say, thieves get caught on their 40^th day. Now the fortieth day may take 20 years to come, but it will surely arrive some day. Sadly Rita’s 40^th day arrived less than 6 months into the job. As usual the thieves got caught simply because of their greed. The small amounts that they had started off stealing were not easy to detect because of the large volumes of cell phone scratch cards that were being sold. But the people in the racket got greedy and decided that if they had gotten away with the small amounts, there was no reason why they could not get away with larger amounts.

Rita’s overall boss at the office was a man called Omondi. He was overweight and was always sweating. Mr Omondi may have been overweight, sweaty and maybe didn’t smell too good, but he was very intelligent. He called Rita into his office one day and explained to her that he had already unearthed their schemes of theft and was going to call in the police. Rita was too frightened to even move. Omondi picked up the land line on his desk and started dialing. Rita quickly recovered and is said to have quickly gone down on her knees begging him. Omondi just continued dialing.

“Hello is that Central police station?”

By this time Rita was tagging at his shirt sleeves and already in a cold sweat.

Omondi slowly put down the telephone receiver and gave his conditions for the “forgiveness” Rita was cornered and she knew it. The conditions included her giving full information to Omondi on how exactly the racket was carried out and who was involved. The other condition to her horror but not surprise was paying her boss with a sexual favor, right there and then in the office.

Rita tried to think of a way out but there was none. The smiling Mr Omondi wanted the sexual favour before anything else. He lifted the phone and told his secretary to hold all calls as he did not want to be interrupted. He carefully locked the door as Rita looked on feeling like a trapped bird. She took her position on the desk. It seemed to last forever but finally it was over. He reached inside his desk and handed her toilet roll to wipe herself.

Although Rita felt defiled and very dirty, her ordeal was far from being over. She gave all the details of her partners in crime who were promptly picked up by the police and locked up in cells. She wrote a statement at the police station and was notified of the date she needed to appear in court to give evidence against her former colleagues.

For a week she held on to the belief that things had not turned out so badly since she had managed to retain her job. If she had not caught some crazy disease from the sex with Mr Omondi, she would be okay, she kept telling herself. But a nasty surprise awaited her at the end of the week.

Mr Omondi called her into his office again and fired her. But not before having sex with her one more time.