He’s in the business of moving things. Agricultural commodities, to be precise; cereals. Tea. Coffee. Halal meat products. The works. It doesn’t matter where. You want 3-tonnes of mint and chives to Dodoma in three weeks? He will get you the 3-tonnes of mint and chives in Dodoma in three weeks. It involves a lot of experience, networks, a lot of meetings and a lot of late night phone calls. It involves giving your word and keeping that word.
And that’s how he got on the phone with a contact from a famous Israeli company that does fish farming in Nyanza. He needed someone, a contact, who could put together a substantial order of Nile Perch he had just received. He’d done fish orders before, but this was Tilapia to Saudi Arabia, not Nile Perch. Nile Perch was a different, uhm, kettle of fish, if you will allow. You can’t farm them in cages like Tilapia. You have to know a lot of fishermen in lots of beaches along the lake and in the islands of Lake Victoria.
He needed a fish expert.
Enter a man we will call Ochibo.
“We have done a lot of work with him before,” his contact said. “He’s from those sides (Nyanza) so he knows all the beaches. If anyone can get all that fish for you, in good time, this man will.”
He phoned Ochibo while he drove down Mbagathi Road that same afternoon.
Because of the scale of the order, Ochibo promised to fly down for a meeting the following morning. The meeting was set for noon at Sierra Bar and Grill in Yaya Center.
When he walked into Sierra Bar and Grill, Ochibo was waiting. He was tall, slim but with a bit of athletic muscle on him. But not your rugby-type build with a ripple of muscles on his shoulders. He struck him as someone who had played basketball in his heydays given how large and firm his handshake felt. He looked to be in his late 30s but took good care of himself. Picked his clothes well.
He was in the company of another older fellow, a man with a shabby oversized blazer. He looked like a lecturer in one of these small satellite universities that have set up in the village, K recalls. He introduced the man as an “engineer,” his associate. This is a very Luo thing to say; to address someone by their profession; daktari, engineer, wakili. For are they not all nouns?
“You should try out these chicken wings – they have blue cheese dressing,” K suggested. “It’s all I eat here.”
So they spoke shop while they nibbled on wings.
Ochibo was cocky.
And a shameless namedropper: “The other day we were with Ababu.” “I built all the fish cages they [The Israelis] use.” “My sister and the governor’s wife are close business associates and friends…” “When I was in Muscat for biashara two winters ago…” “One of Baba’s brother-in-law is my….”
In ten minutes he knew that he had lived in Singapore, was married to a lawyer, where his children go to school and the car he drives and the holidays he had taken. K didn’t mind. He is also from Nyanza, he understands this type of colour.
He was also fascinated at how Ochibo kept crashing the bones of the chicken wings. Chewing them off like they were slices of pawpaw. Engineer wasn’t one to speak. He had the silent, patient face of an old doctor who had seen too many people with diabetes. He mostly sat in silence, barely touching his chicken wings. He struck K to be from the school of thought that chicken wings isn’t food. At least not for adults.
They eventually talked biashara. K told them he had an initial order for a truck of Nile Perch to Kakamega but this order would get to six trucks each week. Potentially this was a big client and delivering this test order was crucial. Ochibo, although a braggadocio, clearly knew his shit. He offered invaluable insight on the supply chain of fish, especially Nile Perch. He talked about his vast contacts on the ground, his vast network of fishermen from Usenge to Sindo. He occasionally serviced clients in Congo, Rwanda, Dubai… He supplies supermarket chains and hotels. A man on the ball. Or boat. He was passionate and engaged. His eyes lit up and he leaned forward when he talked about fish.
The volume involved is huge, how are you going to fund this? Ochibo posed.
K mentioned that he was taking a facility to finance the operation; buying of crates, a truck and other expenses. That would come to over 2 million shillings in total. The math, as the urban saying goes, was mathing.
Ochibo promised to work on a contract at his earliest convenience, as he wiped his big paws with a hot towel. He said he was off to visit his cousin in Runda (where else would his cousin reside?) after the meeting and fly back to Kisumu the following day then bang out the details of the contract.
They stood and shook hands.
The following evening a copy of the contract landed in his email. He wired a downpayment of 1.2 million as agreed. Ochibo got cracking. He was going to drive down to the beaches of Homabay county and start sourcing for the Nile Perch. He had called his contacts. “Meanwhile, I was getting the other parts of logistics ready and booking my flight to Kisumu because I wanted to meet the fish there and see its transportation to Kakamega.”
However, the following day Ochibo called and said the lake was “dirty”. “The prices of fish were riding higher than he had anticipated because he wasn’t getting the quality of Nile Perch he wanted in the quantities he desired. He sounded confident till his team on the ground, he assured me, were working overtime to get my fish.”
The truck was on standby in Kisumu, full of crates. He flew down to Kisumu and checked into an AirBnB in Milimani estate. “I was in constant communication with Ochibo,” he says. “He was updating me on his moves, complaining though, about how challenging all this was becoming. He said he was forced to go further inland to look for the fish.”
A day became two and then three. “The client was now calling me asking what the hell was happening to his Nile Perch. The agreed deadline had passed a day earlier.” Ochibo called and said, Look, Nile perch is proving tricky. Why don’t I supply Tilapia in the meantime, the margins are better and it’s right here in plenty. As we look for the Nile Perch. K was irritated. What am I going to do with Tilapia? The client needs mbuta, he told him. Ochibo said Sawa. The following day he called and said, “I got the fish. I’m going to put it into the truck and it will be with you by midday.”
K called the client and told them, “we are on. Your fish will be with you at dawn.”
Only Ochibo called after a few hours. He sounded agitated, “This is something that has never happened in all my years doing this fish business,” he said.
K was on his laptop at Java on Acacia Mall, having an iced tea.
“What’s up?” K asked, thinking maybe the lake had evaporated.
“I saw the fish. And it was all rotten.”
“Rotten?”
“Yes, these guys must have tampered with the fish.”
“How would they tamper with the fish?” K suddenly felt green around the gills – to use a fishy expression.
“Like I said, this has never happened in all the years doing this.”
“You know these people.”
“Yes, yes, I know them.”
“And you have the necessary documentation?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then have those guys give you new fish.”
“Yes, it’s not that simple. This is not fish you get from a supermarket shelf.”
Things went south from there. Suffice it to say, K never got his fish. He lost 1.2 million. He involved the DCI and the case is still ongoing.
“Losing this amount of money wasn’t even the hardest thing for me last year,” K tells me. “I have been doing business for years, many many years and you are prone to lose monies here and there. This was the most I have lost, yes but it was the feelings it evoked in me. Bad evil feelings. I wanted to harm this man.”
K is a born-again Christian. Has been for longer than he has been doing business. He has accepted Jesus Christ as his personal saviour. He tries to live a virtuous life. That’s how he also does his business. He believes things happen for a reason but he was struggling why someone would con him, “especially someone who comes from where I come from and speaks the language I speak. I thought we would build each other, that he would see the bigger picture. I was gravely disappointed in him. I do a lot of business with the guys from the mountain, lots of business, and I can count the number of times someone has gone against their word. Maybe twice. I can count the number of times my own people have tried to snooker me or undercut me or run off without delivering. So that was very saddening. What is worse is that this man shook my Christian armor. I wanted to kill him.”
He thought of paying someone 100,000 shillings to shoot him in the head. He went to bed thinking about it. He dreamt of him being found in a forest with soiled pants and a bullet in his eye. He thought of him being tortured in a windowless room in a house without furniture in Ruiru. Him screaming and begging and eventually being shot and thrown off a bridge tied like luggage.
“I struggled with these thoughts of revenge but then I got to my senses. I really did, It was a very difficult month of last year,” he says. “But I prayed over it. And I let it go. I thought about my daughter, what would happen to her when I’m sent to jail for murder and I thought it wasn’t worth 1.2 million shillings. I don’t even think this guy is a conman. I think I might have met him at a time when he was declining and struggling with debt and I was an easy target.”
“Do you still think about it?”
“Yes. I haven’t let it go,” he says. “One day he will be sitting in a restaurant having lunch. Two men in jackets will walk up to him. They will manhandle him and cuff him. That day is coming. I still want justice. I deserve it even as a Christian.”