A pastor wanted to rent an apartment for his family, but kept being denied by landlords because he had 8 children. People keep telling him to lie about how many children he had, but being a pastor, he couldn’t lie. One day, however, he decided that enough was enough. He told his wife to take the 7 younger children with her and go to the cemetery. He then took the oldest child to visit a new apartment. They went over the details of the lease with the potential landlord and right before the man signed the papers, the landlord asked him a last question: “Do you have any other kids?” “Oh yes,” answered the pastor. “I have seven others, but they’re at the cemetery with their mother.”

I have been cutting my hair at the same hair salon for the last twenty or so years. The barbers and the salon ownership may have changed over the years, but the same salon premises located in the same building remains upstanding to date. The building, located on a major street in a busy commercial district in our beloved city of Nairobi, was owned by an extremely enterprising lady owner who ensured that her commercial tenants never lacked power or running water by ensuring redundancies in place for those two key utilities. The building hummed successfully, with all floors rented out for the most part and parking was inevitably a fairly scarce commodity.

But alas! Like a good Shakespearean tale, this utopian state of existence has come to a screeching halt. Sometime in the last two years, the building ownership changed when the lady owner sold it to a buyer who had allegedly recently come into funds from winning a huge lawsuit against the government. For reasons best known to the buyer, the management of the building was allegedly handed over to the son.

I drive a pick-up. You can imagine my dismay when I drove up to the gate late in 2019, a gate that I’ve driven up to for the last twenty or so years, and was very politely informed by the guards that pick-up trucks were no longer permitted parking within the building premises. I would have to park outside. I asked why in total befuddlement. “Madam,” the stroppy guard responded – never give a Kenyan guard a little power that he never had before as it will be zealously applied – “hapa tumeambiwa watu wanahama sana. Na hawalipi kodi wanaodaiwa. Kwa hivyo pick-up haziruhuswi vile zinabeba vitu za watu wanaotoroka.” Right. So pick-up trucks were being used to carry office furniture for allegedly escaping tenants. Tenants who were allegedly not paying their rent. Consequently, all pick-up owners were blacklisted and labelled with the official “rent avoider escape mode” moniker. So the guard was not going to let me in. Period. My tenacity and righteous indignation eventually got me in, which is a story for another day but it left a horrific taste in my mouth and even more roiling anger experienced by the salon owner whose numerous clients had fallen victim to this inexplicable edict.

Last Friday, I went for my usual haircut. My car was one of two in a parking lot that used to heave on all sides with tens of parked cars. The previous weekend, my hair cut had to be abandoned midway as there was no water to wash heads, and there was no water because the external water pump was not working because electricity had gone and the fuel of the power generator had run out because the landlord did not see the need to have a back-up generator on standby. Tenants from the upper floors are not allowed to use the lifts over the weekends and if they have given notice to vacate, even from the top of the seven storeyed building, they are then not allowed to use the lift during weekdays.

The building is a pale shell of its existence two years ago. I have watched a singular landlord destroy client value inherited from the previous landlord. Goodwill destroyed. Relationships with decades-old tenants being destroyed. This is happening in a real estate environment where the supply of commercial office space by far outweighs the slowing demand, covid-19 notwithstanding. What is visibly apparent is that any business sense for the landlord family may have been buried in a cemetery years ago. Exhuming the same will require the prayers of a thousand pastors.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka