should have cut off that beard completely because those grey hairs are not helping in your mission to look young, I mentally chastise the short, old man in an oversized coat. When he looks up from his papers, he seems to recognise the chick that has come in after him and has chosen to sit next to me. Through their conversation later, I find out her name is Lydia.
She takes a seat and goes through the newspaper she carried in with her. She mumbles comments about the day’s headlines and makes fun of a photograph showing a smiling bank executive handing toys to a malnourished child.
The emaciated body had made the front page the previous week. “Corporate Social Responsibility, my foot!” she grumbles
. She looks up, her gaze meeting the short, old man in an oversized coat who has now moved from his seat. “You made it to this round I see,” he says while enthusiastically shaking her hand and looking around as if to make sure the rest of us have heard.
“So did you,” she says smiling, “How have you been, Mzee? We should stop meeting like this,” she adds removing her bag from the next seat and offering it to him instead. He sits down next to her and the two start to catch up. From their conversation,
I can tell they have met several times in different companies, always being interviewed for one job or another. “
No. We didn’t stand a chance at that Parliament job.
Did you see the pile of letters where our application letters were thrown?” He asks rhetorically. “I bet if we tried to find out who the current editor of the Hansard is, it is definitely someone who already knew someone there,” he adds with a defeated shrug.
The old man goes into a tirade about how he would have given up the whole job search had it not been for the children he has to put through school. What is turning into a pity party is broken up when one of the interviewers enters and announces that the next interview is due soon and we need to move to the conference room next door. Two other people stand at the door panting and checking their watches. Written all over their faces is the relief that they’ve managed to make it to the next round. We shuffle to the next room, take our seats and get ready for our second written interview. “There has been a natural disaster in one of the rural constituents which has claimed ten lives and left hundreds of families displaced. Write a speech for the Minister of Disaster
Preparedness which he will deliver when he goes to sympathise with the survivors”. That is our first question. This question, instead of arousing panic or excitement, reminds me of my father. He always says I’m good with words and it is because of him I am here.
The first time he told me to get in touch with his friend at the Ministry for a communications officer’s job, I said no straight out. I had just come back from one of the best technology universities in Malaysia where I did a Bachelor of Arts in games art development and
I wasn’t going to waste my time being whatever my father suggested. People always frowned at the kind of course
I did, many questioning its marketability in a third world country, but how are we going to become less third world, if we don’t introduce some of the things we see and learned in the first world? And why can’t third world students study subjects they are passionate about, instead of what their country’s limited job markets force them to do? I clearly remember the day my passion for video games started. I was six years old and my father had just returned from a trip abroad and he presented me with a Super Mario Bros game. He had planned to get me a toy car, but when he saw his American friend pick up the grey, rectangular cartridge for his son at the store, he decided to get the game for me instead. He did not know how 32 to operate it so I had to teach myself, my mother swears they did not see me for a week. I could never refute that accusation considering that video game became my best friend and incited my passionate love affair with video games. Every time my father went on a trip I asked that he bring me not the trendiest clothes, but the latest video games. The Legend of Zelda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dragon Warrior saw me through my tumultuous teenage years, when I escaped into them, trying to get over my crush on Crystal - our next door neighbour or when I wanted to impress Bella - the first girl who came over our house to visit when I was 17. Later I graduated to Assassin’s Creed, Black OPs, Battlefield 3 Online and Modern Warfare 3 and my love for gaming was pretty much sealed.
Over the years, I met people with similar interests and while in Malaysia, I decided to do a course so I could set up the first gaming arcade in the country when I returned. Every day I dreamt of having that arcade and doing something I loved.
My father, like with most of the suggestions I presented to him, laughed off the idea. He said it would never work, although he still continued to pay my school fees and made sure I was more than comfortable as a foreign student. He must have hoped I would get over the idea by the time I graduated
. He never ceased to mention how good I was at communicating and how he was always impressed by poems I had written
. I always enjoyed watching him fidget when his friends asked what I did in school. \
He became adept at steering the conversation towards himself, he would say “some sort of engineering but he writes well too” so as to prevent me from revealing my desired vocation. He told me about the communications officer vacancy, even before it was advertised in the papers. This was no surprise. He must have told his friends
I was coming home and he needed work for his son. When I said no, he gave me a long lecture about how he had indulged my childish choices for long enough, “It’s about time you became realistic and looked for a job that is actually available on the market” he told me
. I argued that the reason they’d sent us out to acquire knowledge was so we could learn new ideas and introduce them into our own country and make it a better place. I tried desperately to convince him, “There is no doubt that I would make it work. I have done all the research about what
I need and if you invest in me I will have paid you back with interest in the first six months.” This did not go down well with my father though, “Listen young man” he told me “you have already wasted enough of my money and I will definitely not spend another dime on your wishful thinking on games and what not.” A vein popped up in the middle of his forehead, like it always did when he was determined to win an argument. Unfortunately, while abroad and generously provided for, it had never crossed my mind to save some of the money my father had been sending me.
I had never faced any resistance from him concerning most of the things I told him about, so I always believed he would be interested in investing in the arcade. Days later, I received a call, a woman was on the other end and she informed me of an upcoming
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