And Nakumatt said,"let there be light in Meru"!

It sounds strange that Meru town got its first street lights installed only last week, courtesy of Nakumatt Holdings. It is reported that Meru town residents were gripped with excitement and took quite some time marveling at the bright lights lining the town’s main highway. Minister Mwiraria was of course not to be left behind, profusely thanking Nakumatt and passionately appealing them to extend the lighting project right to the edges of the town.

Make no doubt about it, Mwiraria and his counterparts will be mounting PNU podiums in the next few weeks praising the taa ya maendeleo brought about by the government’s CDF program. But now we know that while they were engaged in the national duty of negotiating lease contracts with faceless vampires of no known abode, some socially responsible (or fast-footed enterprising) citizens were modernizing their village town for them. And Nakumatt, having agreed to extend the project, has probably given them a straw to clutch on during their vote seeking charades where they’ll ask for the next five years for kazi iendelee.

Are the Meru town residents now debating whether it is their waheshimiwa who bring them maendeleo or Nakumatt Holdings? In the meantime, a few of them could be visualizing the prospects of a stall or two for their beloved qat twigs outside the expansive Nakumatt shopping mall once completed.

Waheshimiwa is there any chance of installing Mr. Thiagarajan Ramamurthy (Nakumatt Operations Director) a Meru elder? He’s certainly done much more for the locals than the councils of haggard elders we recall imploring Kibaki to return Mwiraria to the cabinet!