CANDID TALK : Thanks Philip Mpango, my junk will be on the road
What you need to know:
- You see, the minister has made this year the best for me and the junk I picked off the office junkyard for a song, the junk that has been rotting outside the two-roomed shack I call home. The moment he read the 2017/18 budget at the hallowed house in Dodoma, I have not stopped celebrating.
Dr Philip Mpango, the finance boss is a gentleman I would love to sit with at Mzee Shirima’s joint and have one on me – that is where I “obey” my thirst by wetting my throat with drinks in brown bottles.
You see, the minister has made this year the best for me and the junk I picked off the office junkyard for a song, the junk that has been rotting outside the two-roomed shack I call home. The moment he read the 2017/18 budget at the hallowed house in Dodoma, I have not stopped celebrating.
I feel like one who has hit the jackpot. After scrapping charges on road licence, I can boast of being an owner of a car, even if it qualified for a scrap metal yard some eons back. Even after I put so much money on the spares, the junk goes into fits and finally, a comatose. All mechanics, from Temeke to Kigamboni know my woes and have on many occasions, told be to consider sending that car to a crap dealer. I refused!
I said in one of my third-rate columns, that although I am a “happy” owner of a contraption that resembles a car, rarely did I drive it because if it is not the carburettor has not gone kaput, it could be that the radiator is peeing all the way. Of course, if you own anything on wheels, even if it were a wheelbarrow in this sprawling God-forsaken Uswaz, folks don’t take it kindly – are we all not supposed to be poor folks?
It is for this reason that as soon as I parked the junk in my compound that the entire Uswaz went abuzz, claiming that I had stolen coins from somewhere and behaved in a way that I consider evil. I am told that Hussein the Uswaz wag has been consulting the self-proclaimed Dr Kaniki Kombo, the Uswaz witch doctor over it. Well, that does not bother me because witchcraft is neither here nor there.
Hon Mpango Sir, I hope you are reading this column and that you have accepted my sincere gratitude because, you see, I was in perpetual fear of TRA folks that it is not once that I contemplated burning the junk. Now that you have spread the charges to petrol and forgiven me of the “sin” of owning a junk, I will faithfully keep the junk on the road but in good condition! Thanks sir!
