A while back, in the villages, carpenters were rare and furniture was either expensive, or guys were simply too poor, to afford. Many a young men made their first beds themselves
All you did was pick a machete, a few available rusted nails and head to the bushes. You cut a few wild rafters, fasten them with bush ropes and wild twigs, carry your creation on your head and head back home. Although it didn’t look very beautiful, it was still a bed. Aren’t ugly human beings stil human beings?
For a mattress, you sew together several used gunny bags, to make the shape of a genuine mattress, fill the inside of this mattress with grass and there you have it
You refilled this grass twice every week
This was an inspiration from a mattress called “California” which was factory made, and wasn’t anything more than a large plastic bag filled by rags
While sleeping, the rages forming the soft parts, would keep running away as the sleeper ran after them, until when this race will be halted by a dawn
Those born last week may not comprehend what I am talking about. Anyway, what I mean to say is that a bed isn’t a piece of furniture, too sophisticated to make
That trending ICU bed, isn’t a very complicated thing to build and any serious welder can make one. The country has been importing them before, for reasons other than incapacity by our craftsmen
Meshack Otieno, a Luo, is supposed to have created an ICU bed, the same which Gathogo did, an inferior copy, only for the president to give him a deal
I hear the president gave Gathogo and not Otieno the deal, because the latter isn’t “a person of the house”. Kenya is tribal to the core, and if it has taken you an ICU bed to realise this, then your organs of senses are failing
However, I strongly feel this Siaya man hadn’t patented his work, because he isn’t the originator of the idea. This would made it illegal for anyone else to manufacture the same
All Otieno did was to try to locally assemble, a product which the country has been importing. The Gathogo isn’t guilty either, because he may have been more aggressive in marketing his product or he simply took advantage of the prevailing tribalism
To conclude this “fitina”, Nyanza has six counties, each required to have 300 bed capacity isolation wards. They can purchase from this local entrepreneur as an indictment to the president’s tribal card
This is why devolution was created
Adapted from Jerome Ogola FB page post
