Facebook link, published on January 12, 2016
The Plateau Phase
From Plight of the Jobless (1), Jim’s lag phase was a ‘slowdown’ period where as a freshly jobless person he disconnected from the daily routine of reporting to an office while at the exponential phase he struggled to develop relentless ‘survival antics’ in fighting off increasing financial pressure to sustain his (family) lifestyle, against a strenuous livelihood. And now in this final (plateau phase) he expected a relatively calm experience in trading off the pains of job searching and debt crisis with hopes of clinching several job offers.
However, the ride turned out to be more heart wrenching than a period of quiescence.
Back to reading Jim’s job application emails. As we continued to plough through his emails, Jim effused a somber mood, but when we read the email inviting him for an interview, he transformed into an elated man! Clearly, excitement was written all over his face, considering that this time the email respondent had referred to him by his name and not an ‘Applicant’.
He went on to tell how he dressed up for the interview on the appointed date, decked in a suit and matching tie, all in an effort to impress. On that morning he even volunteered to take his son to the school van pickup point. His son asked, ‘dad, kwani leo unaenda job?’ to which he mused a faint response, ‘ndiyo’. Looking at his son, he wondered how far the vagaries of his job loss were affecting his children. In the same way that sickness, moving houses, divorce and death affect children, it was evident that loss of employment didn’t spare his munchkins. Although they didn’t fully understand the dynamics of making a living vis a vis having a stay-at-home-dad, they clearly had their share of watching their dad lose weight, get excited over an interview invitation, or avoid receiving calls from debt collectors, among a host of other hide and seek games played by the jobless.
When I asked how the interview went, Jim thought it had been a cool experience, a sort of watershed moment. He was very optimistic that the panelists would select him as the best candidate. Of course, his academic qualifications and work experience was top notch (in his delusion) and definitely he saw no reason as to why the interview panelists would look him over. Interview results were to be communicated in a week’s time, so during this time Jim didn’t submit very many job applications but was busy sourcing for soft loans to sustain the pressing needs of food with the promise to repay hinged on the anticipated job offer! Clearly, a man out of work for more than six months should be exempted from the proverb, ‘do not count your chicks before they hatch’. The other basic needs of shelter and clothing had either been negotiated for (with the tenancy caretaker) or dropped off from his list of priorities.
According to him, three weeks glided past with Jim holding up his crossed fingers about the job offer. No communication on the interview results, was to him like a death knell, as his frustration and disappointment built up. His worst fear was that ‘there was a better candidate than him’ and certainly in this case he hadn’t been the choice candidate, but these (equal opportunity) employers have their own discretion on whom to communicate to about the outcome of the interviews. Some of the employers actually indicate ‘should you not hear from us [within a specified period of time] consider your unsuccessful’. The HR and Management professionals who come up with such obscene policies need to know the kind of anxiety they subject job candidates to, when someone has to keep checking their emails (thanks to digital revolution, we no longer have to go to cyber cafés) or clutch their phone as if everything depended on it.
What Jim didn’t realize at the time, is that the interview he attended would be one among many that he would soon be invited to attend (and fail). Whatever happens at those interviews remain unclear and opaque. How they arrive at decisions on who is the best candidate remain a mystery and after attending several (online/Skype and on-site) interviews, Jim was clutching at a begging bowl. The bank had sent him the fourth and final demand letter giving him a notice period of 40 days within which to repay his entire loan amount or the bank would invoke one of its bylaws to protect its interests. A full disclosure of his pain was exhibited when he pulled out a scanned letter from the bank with the following excerpt:
‘Dear Jim
…we [name of the bank], the chargee of the aforementioned property now hereby give you notice that you may within FORTY (40) DAYS from the said date of Service of this Notice upon you, redeem the above captioned property. The above balance continues to attract an interest at the rate of 21% p.a. until payment in full.
TAKE NOTICE that unless the aforestated amount, together with further interest that will accrue as aforesaid is paid to the bank FORTY (40) DAYS from the date of service of this Notice to Sell (which is deemed to be 7 days from the date of posting), the Bank shall, after expiry of this notice, commence sale of the charged property for the recovery of the amount outstanding and remaining unpaid together with interest thereon at the rate(s) stated above plus all costs and other charges ensuing therefrom.
TAKE FURTHER NOTICE that the sale of the charged property shall be by public auction or private treaty…
THIS NOTICE TO SELL is given pursuant to the terms of Section 96(2) of the Land Act, 2012
Yours Faithfully
[Remedial Manager]’
Signing off the letter using the words ‘Yours faithfully’ was completely nonsensical! First, the letter was written in King James English and second, the use of capital letters was either shouting or screaming at the recipient of the letter. Up until then I didn’t realize that my friend Jim was in such deep financial mess and urgently needed to be bailed out, whichever way and by whatever means. At the lag and exponential phases, he was fighting to barely survive and make ends meet on food items, but based on the bank correspondence he was staring at a possible loss of the only property he used to boast about to his working friends.
As if that wasn’t enough, the SACCO people were beckoning at him, but through a different route. Whereas banks secure loans with properties and individual salaries (assets), SACCOs widen their ‘catch’ through a system of guarantors (humans). On the one hand, the bank was threatening to dispossess Jim of his hard earned property, on the other hand the SACCO communicated to his loan guarantors that they were proceeding to recover Jim’s defaulted loan from their savings. Below is an excerpt of the letter that Jim had stored in his computer:
‘Dear Jim,
…we wish to notify you that you have defaulted in repaying your loan
By a copy of this letter, we are demanding full payment of the remaining loan and interest balances after offsetting your deposits as indicated below…
Take note that should we not hear from you within 7 days from the date of this letter, we shall proceed to list you with Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) and thereafter recover the same from your guarantors who are here copied.
Yours faithfully
[Credit Manager]’
Again, the SACCO was ludicrously using the words ‘Yours faithfully’. There is no faithfully or sincerely when you’re being threatened in a letter with being listed in CRB or your guarantors calling to demand a meeting with you or that you provide them with some respite in the likely event of your going under! Pressure on Jim seemed to be quite high and I was surprised to see how he remained sane in such predicament. Such are not problems of the young and faint hearted but the seasoned and hard knocks of life. I toyed with the thought of suggesting a funds drive to save my friend, but with all the wedding committees, funeral committees, medical drives and baby showers in our neighborhood, it would be a far cry to add a ‘bankruptcy drive’.
Jim was the only child in a family of 5 siblings, who had a salaried job. It would have been an alternative if one of his siblings was stable enough to support him financially or at least host his family as he confronted the anger of debt collectors and guarantors who wouldn’t ‘understand’. All his siblings were living from hand to mouth. His parents were aging and he dared not share with them the intricacies of his predicament lest his father succumbs to a long-term illness he was braving, while his mother was holding the fort against terminal dementia.
While the rest of the country was debating ‘Ruto’s trial at the Hague’, ‘the Two tribes of Kenya’ and Referendum call dubbed ‘Punguza Mzigo, Punda Amechoka’, poor Jim was a lone ranger against hard economic times occasioned by losing a job. We couldn’t talk further but vaguely stared at the clear skies. The dilemma was visible. Our eyes welled with tears. It was approaching 6 p.m. as we sat outside his house, which would soon be auctioned. Perhaps Jim needed to re-incarnate himself in a different world. Maybe he should have opted to learn a different skill/trade. Question is how do you downgrade from being a man of means to a man with no means. I was angry at myself that I couldn’t help, but it was too late. Too late for me, and too late for Jim.
His wife came to where we sat and informed him that someone had checked in to see him. The unexpected visitor turned out to be a Valuer dispatched from the bank. Before he could finish explaining himself and presenting a copy of his letter from the bank, some two guarantors who were his long time friends walked into his compound demanding a piece of his flesh! My heart sunk lowest and my mind refuses to remember the rest of the events of that evening.
All I can now recall is that Jim relocated to his rural home where he does odd jobs at the market place. His wife deserted him and his children dropped out of school. His broken family now adds to the numerous statistics in NGO reports of ‘beneficiaries’ being supported by donor funded programs for humanitarian interventions (like cash for work), where he digs up trenches and is paid by a local NGO owned by the wife of the area MCA. His youngest child stayed out of school for more than 5 years and could only be accepted into non formal education, where he is training in basic literacy and numeracy while his eldest is enrolled in a vocational skills training centre where he will soon complete his Trade Test II in Electronics repair.
The two children initially underwent rehabilitation from drug addiction and violent behavior under a ‘development project’ funded by a Foundation ran by the family of the area MP.
It bemuses me how capitalism has destroyed the dignity of humanity. I bet we have become extremely individualistic and overtaken by bystander apathy. Like Kenya Satirist, the late Binyavanga Wainaina, I daresay, ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’.
Views expressed in this article are my own
Joseph N. Mungai is inspired by people’s life experiences. Do you have a intriguing life story and need a ghost writer? Email: j.mungai@hotmail.co.uk