My Father’s Shadow

First published on afreada

Photo credit: Studioflow via Flickr

“How long have you been here? His colleague asks, fleetingly.”
“One year three months.” He responds with a despondent icy tone. He tries to force a grin and paint a perfect picture but all that comes out is a broken smile. His face falls and churns.

“You have tried, they never last more than five months, they just stay long enough to get experience and they’re off.”

He grits his teeth and his face stays clenched. He feels like he’s been here for an eternity.
The open plan office feels like prison and the walls are closing on him fast. Coming to work feels like walking barefoot on broken glass. He can’t stand the small talk from his colleague, the noise from the printing machine nor the receptionist who smiles at him often with her white teeth spreading across her entire face.

He had vowed to ignore her smiles but today he can’t resist her, she is warm and inviting, her smile bulldozes him. He has no chance against it and so he smiles back - a sheepish, nervous smile. She chuckles and calls him to the reception desk in that seductive way women do with their eyes smiling like Christmas.

“Uko na five hundred bob kwa Mpesa unikopeshe?” She says with a certain conviction. “Niko na thao tu ya kulipa bill ya stima.” He responds, sternly, annoyed at how easy it is for people to take advantage of others.

“You must be very poor to have stayed here this long.” It’s a poor attempt at humor from his colleague that gets under his skin. He laughs a painful laugh. He is poor but dad is a corporate honcho in the banking sector. He remembers with a pinch of salt that dad had connected him to a credit control job in a bourgeois bank but he turned it down.

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