DIARY OF A ESTATE GUARD

My name is Abu Kuloba, a private security guard in a gated estate on the outskirts of the city. The residents refer to us private security guards as Solja- a corruption of Soldier. It doesn’t matter; after all, it puts bread on the table. As a daytime solja, I am an expert on sitting down and waiting. Solja always sits and waits; it is my lot.

The security guard job has been my calling for the last seven years and I am now resigned to be a professional gateman with all the stereotypes attributed to it. It might be humble and in a way risky calling but then I find it also in a way strangely satisfying. Maybe because it seems so undemanding, so unfettered,  so natural…maybe also... so lazy. 
My junior colleague is one named Jamin Shihemi, A tall, gangly, rake thin man with a withered moustache. I don’t know the origin of the name Jamin, but I personally don’t like him. Never liked him. Partly because he doesn’t listen keenly to my instructions before acting on them and partly because he irritates me constantly with his habit of having me finish his sentences for him.
 For example, whenever he comes late he is bound to say:

 “Pole, nimechele…..?” kwa sababu nilipitia kumsalimia aunty ya….Or every  lunch hour, he would always call out “Nahisi njaa najisikia kula chaku…. ?” Stupid man. Very.

You become a Solja, very few people notice you but you also become a man watcher; A man watcher sees so many beyond the presented picture, and there are always something lively and interesting to watch in a gated estate of 64 maisonettes

Two common threads run through these estate residents. First, I dare say is -stress. They all seem overly stressed. Stressed, I suspect from their mortgaged lives and stressed from the never-ending car loans and secondly because a big fraction like much middle-upper class is that the estate residents are snobs.

Snobbishness as I use the word, implies both an upward and a downward movement-A scramble upwards to emulate those whose position excels one’s own and a look downwards on (or sometimes straight through ) those less happily endowed than one’s self. A true snob should never rest, there is always a higher goal to attain and there are, by the same token, always more and more people-like yours truly-to look down upon with scorn.

 A case in point.

It is early, the clock reads 0630 on this cold Thursday morning and a glistening well-oiled car rolls slowly from inside the estate to the gate. We know the car. It belongs to a young female lawyer whose –Jurisprudence- If that is the correct word is never to talk to or acknowledge the Solja’s presence.  I dutifully open the gate after Jamin has booked the car in the register. The car stops and the driver’s window slides down and she looks through me, her hair weave is perfect in place, the earrings sparkle and the red lipsticks on the lips ravishing. She could be good, if she wanted to, I suppose. Finally, she addresses the windscreen almost with contempt.

“ Huyo Maid yangu asitoke kwa hii gate leo, Umesikia?”

The windscreen has a bit of training in public relations and politely answers back.

“ Sawa,Madam,Lakini  wewe ni wa nyumba gani? Maid yako ni yupi….”

“ Hujui hii Gari? Kazi yako ni nini hapa?”

The windscreen wisely keeps quite knowing that any word is likely to open another battlefront. It keeps quite. The window slides up, the automatic gear is engaged and the vehicle on bank loan zooms off.

I sigh as I dutifully close the gate; After all, she went to school. I, Solja, went through school.