Thanks to the game of pool, Kenya is hurtling towards hustler heaven

Brown envelopes have made a bold return to public life in Kenya, and it is not just journalists who are casually handling them.

Elected and unelected leaders are carrying brown envelopes, bulging with supporters certificates, out of meetings with the country’s top leadership.

It is impossible for anyone to seek a job with certificates and testimonials cloistered in State House.

While numerous job applications are being processed everywhere, people have to survive and save and prosper.

You do not have to be the most qualified for a task; all you need is a go-getter mentality that says if you can’t get something, you take it.

Opportunities come and go, and so one must seize the moment.

Since life is often unpredictable, one has to adapt.

This adaptability is the stuff that makes economies grow in the present century.

You could be supplying chlorine to treat water today and building roads tomorrow.

Pool, the game of cue sticks, balls and a table with rails, gave the world the word that is turning Kenya into a success story.

It is called hustling — the art of using all means necessary to make money.

You sell your body, your mind or your soul to keep you alive for a few days.

HUSTLER'S MENTALITY
Everybody has a price. If there is an easy way, why work hard?

There is no point in inventing software when you can buy it from Silicon Valley or better still from the Chinese.

With the right skill set, a hustler can test the elasticity of every rule and more, torture the law until it bends to his will.

One lesson abides: Do not do one thing all day, go home to rest, and expect to grow rich.

Many Kenyans are underemployed as security guards, waiters, nurses, teachers, construction workers and doctors.

That is why they charge a little extra for the service they are already paid to provide. Extra money is always welcome.

A clever scholar once said that hustling is quite different from professional or organised crime because it takes place on the blind side of the law.

Hustlers live by their wits — they work the system and make non-operational systems work.

When you find that you might not win a tender to supply green grams, you set up multiple companies to bid against each other.

After all, life is not an examination test paper, so there is no need to cram books and study hard.

There are successful people in the Senate, the Governor’s office, the National Assembly who were not great academicians, and they have been joined by hordes of followers multiple degree holders.

Street smarts is what counts.

AN ALTERNATIVE

It takes sheer grit and hard work to earn something from nothing.

Instead of sitting idly by the village market politicking, for example, you could pay the Deputy President a visit at his Sugoi home and leave Sh2,000 the richer.

This is enough seed money to set up a chicken business.

Hustling is not a crime, even though some people have been giving hustling a bad name by equating it with deception, dishonesty and unscrupulousness.

But this is the real deal now. It is the occupation of people who start out with nothing selling chickens by the railway station and make something of themselves.

Were it not for the side hustles Kenyans engage in, the country would be mired in poverty with no prospect of becoming a middle-income economy by the year 2030.

With hustling as the new national enterprise, Kenyans are going to achieve greatness by being available at the right price.

Then no one will need to do menial and annoying jobs.

Kwamchetsi Makokha is a former editor with the Daily Nation. [email protected]