The Wages of Corruption

Brown Kaloka the Coxcomb

85 The Wages of Corruption Brown Kaloka the Coxcomb B rown Kaloka is a young man in his late thirties. He has a height of one and half metre, which many people consider as average. But he has always wished he was taller. So he has adopted the habit of always raising his shoulders to satisfy himself that he is tall enough. Another characteristic is that his face is rather spherical but he had wished it to be shaped like a V. In order to satisfy this gnawing wish, he adopted a haircut that rather flattened his hair and made it look like a plateau. Fortunately, the almighty God had endowed him with so much hair, so his barber could easily shape it the way he wanted. This hairstyle, he called it coxcomb, which later earned him his nickname. Many people who knew him started referring to him as Brown Kaloka, the coxcomb. Incidentally, like any coxcomb, Brown Kaloka is particularly concerned about his clothes. Ever since he got out of the depth of poverty, his clothing has been specially ordered from well-known designers. He had always counted himself as lucky when he went to the training school that trained customs officers. He said it was a very competitive exercise to gain admission, especially financially. The financial requirement, though subtle, was one million francs and he had to press on his poverty-stricken parents to do everything to make the money available. So they did, after a lot of gymnastics. Once in the school the coxcomb couldn’t wait to graduate. He always told whoever could listen that he had had his own fair share of poverty and that as soon as he left school he would do everything in his power to catch up with affluence. So when he left school he knew exactly what to do. 86 Sammy Oke Akombi His first post was at the country’s only seaport. He was in charge of all goods entering the country whether for sale or for personal use. He took advantage of the loose system of customs revenue collection, which was not even computerized, to make enormous wealth for himself. He once boasted publicly that the government of the people was actually for people like him. He went on to say that he was being paid a monthly salary to make money for himself, claiming that for every billion francs that went to the government treasury from the port, half a billion went into his personal account. So it had hardly taken him six months on his job to catch up with an affluent lifestyle. Unfortunately, the plans he had had for his dear father, who had made enormous sacrifice for his education could not materialise. The old man died of a malignant cancer before it was properly diagnosed. Coxcomb decided that celebrations marking his father’s death would have to reflect the kind of money his son has. The first thing he thought of doing was to put the corpse in a reliable mortuary. He was afraid that with the frequent power failure in the country no local mortuary would be able to preserve his father’s corpse properly. So he had to arrange for a special flight to Switzerland to take his father’s corpse there. This done, he embarked on building a mansion in Kitchati, his village. He requested an architect to design and produce a plan for him. When he went to pick it up, the architect was about to attend to another client but he went out of his way to fish out the plan and presented to him. After the architect’s hasty explanations he looked at him condescendingly and asked: ‘How much will this cost?’ ‘About fifty million francs CFA,’ the architect answered dryly. ‘What?’ Brown Kaloka asked raising his voice. ‘It could be less. It’s only an estimate,’ ‘Less?’ 87 The Wages of Corruption ‘Less, as I said earlier, it’s only an estimate. Estimates are usually made with positive cost margins. So that amount shouldn’t scare you,’ the architect said soothingly. ‘Scare me you say!’ Brown almost shouted. ‘Er Mr Kaloka. I don’t understand anymore. Would you excuse me I’ve got to attend to other clients, who have been waiting impatiently.’ ‘I can see we don’t understand one another. You see, I’m a very, very rich man. My worth is in...