Officer ankuby’omukono (I’ve been flagged down) for “overspeeding” at 70km, oblivious of the speed limit sign that is still ahead and is visible from where I’ve pulled to the side. This is going to be a most interesting conversation. Or so I thought. Having suffered for walking the straight and narrow the last time round, this was going to be a spirited fight, I promise myself. Long sorry tale shortened, the last time I was in this quandary I ended up in a countryside county jail, and the kangaroo court summarily found me guilty. If the hefty sum I was “fined” made it’s way to the right coffers (as was my insistence), I’ll never know.
So while I was, with the patience of Job, belaboring my point and trying to get the traffic policeman to see the folly of his action and the sign ahead, a fellow who’d been stopped from the opposite direction and had been waiting quite a while decided he’d had it. Next we saw was a cloud of dust and his car disappearing on the horizon. Without much thought (and with both I and the policeman looking on in bewilderment), I volunteered to give chase if my new found friend so it fit to dispense with all manner of speed limits, traffic rules, etc.
Well, he agreed. And from that point on was the one taking orders from me. Talk of tables turning so quickly! With the speed and eagle-eye sharpness of Chipper Adams, I sped off – with the officer-now-turned navigator by my side. For a moment, I lived the life of CTU’s Jack Bauer. In under 4 km, we had reigned in the escapee. And for my valiant service to the Republic of Kenya, I was discharged from my temporary captivity, with honor.
Another day that could have gone terribly wrong had me living a life (even for 4km!) that I never would have had. And I was breathing crisp clean air far away from that dungeon with the young man who had made a penitentiary-calling habit of pounding his mother every time she told him something he did not like. And that fellow who thought his neighbor’s cow was better off in his kraal.
Reminds me of the story of another fellow whose day, until that last one, somehow wound up worse off than the previous one. Well, on this occasion he ended up with a royal robe on his shoulders and a signet ring on his finger. Far from the the dungeon of deep despondency and hopelessness that he was quickly getting accustomed to. The story of Joseph, the dreamer. Another story of a God who loves to sprinkle a little serving of drama to the character stories of the protagonists in his real-life plots.
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