NOT POOR, NOT RICH JUST MIDDLE CLASS — THE ALLURE OF MEDIEVAL EARNINGS.

Thanks to Whatsapp, April Fools’ Day passed without me and many people like me whose minds were fixated on getting their salaries getting pranked. That small contact joke that everybody forwarded on 31st March got me on high alert of any foolery that would come the following day and this day passed without many surprises.
I remember a few pranks back then that carried me away. Uno-Spanish for one probably the only Hispanic word I know save for Amor- was when the Standard Newspaper reported that Brazil (which is this football giant-I hear the first toys that boys are given over there are footballs) was slated to face Kenya in a football friendly and I had completely bought into it. And we know how Kenyan football is marred by all types of corruption cases from its football governing body FKF and it’s never news to us when Kenyan players go unpaid or get stranded in hotels for unpaid bills. Right now there is a promising leadership in FKF I just hope Mr Nick Mwendwa does a great job. I never knew that that had been a prank until the following day. The other one was when The Daily Nation reported that oil had been discovered in KICC just beneath Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s statue and the way the statue is regarded as a Holy Grail of some of some sort if it were true am sure that oil would never have been drilled. Maybe I can say I was younger but ignorance is never a defense.
Anyway payday came and I headed straight home tired from trying to do a big budget in my head against a small salo. Hehe it seems it was going to get finished before I even got started to use it am not complaining though am just having a light moment which is totally allowed and at least I have a nusu mkeka. I get home and do my usuals, quick shower grab a meal and just decided to lie on the couch and have a convo with my uncle. It wasn’t meant to go past 10 but we found ourselves going to sleep past one a.m. Of course it started casually from job stuff then family a lil bit of this uncle is having this going on in their life and that one is making these kinda moves in his career etc and we kept flowing till BAM we hit the jackpot. I don’t know if I should call it a social class, a mental state but there is this thing called MIDDLE CLASS. Most philosophers and analysts always dwell on the rich and the poor and mostly fail to mention the Middle class.
It’s a tricky one and it reminded me of growing up under this cloud of not poor but not rich either. Okay I love my dad and celebrate him for working hard, waking up at 4 a.m every morning just to go to his work station and work to bring food on our table, provide for me and my three siblings with the best education that he could afford and I am sure that if he had better opportunities I would have gone to Braeburn and probably now I would have been speaking refined English add to it some tweng, twang, weng warevaaaar well am not saying that am badly off but thanks to those Martin Lawrence and Will Smith movies now a brother can at least have a conversation with Obama without saying Eh! Pardon me! Excuse. He never got to be rich but there is more time for that to happen I bet you know how the tides turned for Harland sanders the founder of KFC. He did and still continues to do his best his best and maybe one day his grandchild will read this post and say that Castro gave everything he had for them or even write a blog about me.
My uncle shared a story of a young lady (was there a word like BFF in the 90’s??) who approached him for a soft loan but he never and couldn’t get it and she asked him “How can you not get the cash I want and you come from Muli’s place and we all know you’re rich?” Well rich is what neighbors in shaggz think because they see some few assets, some land that looks big but small enough that Ruto cannot be interested in it, granddad’s mango trees which always bring a fortune in season and oooh before I forget my dad’s car. After that question he had a humongous task of explaining to her that they wasn’t rich and “We also borrow sugar sometimes” which reminds me of the saying ‘The rich also cry”.
I’ve had countless experiences like that where am in a place and people think I have cash and feel like I let them down when I don’t give them a handout or order for a cup of tea and in shaggz (upcountry) there a few guys whom I personally that drown that cup of tea in a few seconds and the hot steam from the cup is left still going up. Sometimes somebody will think that you are stingy of which you’re not it’s just that this middle class cloud hangs over your head and you are the only person who sees it and feels it.
At home broke days are more than the windfall days. Me and my younger brother just learnt to read the signs eg you just see githeri cooked for more than three times a week or you see the DSTV not paid for in a long time or the car is left at home because there isn’t enough fuel and there are just some conversations about money that you just can’t go ahead to your dad and tak about them.
Middle class people will dress good almost like the rich people, they are quite trendy but you know looks can be deceiving most of the times they don’t have much cash. Their jobs offer amenities like mortgages and car loans and they take these just to be paying them off for years. Yes they have these assets to show for their hard work and I celebrate them for doing all they can to support their families. People in the lower side will think that the middle class have liquid cash but you’ll be surprised to find out that there are people who are casual workers who may be having more liquid cash than the middle class.
All my life I have been raised in this bracket and I remember high school days just having to do art work to get at least some small cash to buy bread and doughnuts to take with break time tea coz honestly the most my dad ever gave me while going to school was Ksh 500 including fare to school and I always had to buy chips and a hamburger at a joint in town where the burger used to cost just Ksh 50. So by the time I got to school I was only left with less than a hundred bob. Anyway in Drake’s words “we started from the bottom now we here” right now things are shaping up and am happy with where am headed deep in my heart I just know that I won’t be in the same circumstances.

Love and Regards

Castro