I promise you, all I do is mind my own business but all that ever happens is that someone else’s business becomes mine all of a sudden. This time it was just too much. Last Saturday I had gone to the temple in the evening for prayers and taken the kids with me. Usually it’s not a very long programme and I had told the private askari I have that we would be home within two hours. I even gave him a phone handset so I could call him to warn him we are on the way home.

Everything is ok and just before I reach home I give him a missed call which indicates to him we are almost home and he should be near the gate to let us in. To cut a long story short we stood out there for almost an hour and a half. A point worth noting here is that this had happened once before when I had gone out for a friend’s engagement party. I came home around half past ten and stood hooting there for ages. The entire neighbourhood woke up but Wycliffe didn’t. I had to call my security back up and the cops from the police post next door also turned up to help. Eventually the Securex guards jumped over the gate and went to wake him up.

His excuse was that he was tired and had been watching football matches late into the night and had fallen asleep. I also know he’d had some alcohol but I forgave him and let him off with a strict warning and all was well until last Saturday. Once again I’m at the gate and this time I’m calling him on his phone to check where he is but he wouldn’t answer. By now I had three cops from the police post come over to check if all is well. In the interim I had called the Securex control room for back up and they came within minutes.

My kids were really scared by now. Googlee was ok but Dream Girl was in tears and it took a lot for me to stay calm to keep the kids calm. Inside me I did have fear of the unknown. Had Wycliffe gone out to buy alcohol? Had he been run over? Why wasn’t he answering the phone? Too many questions. I couldn’t risk being outside with the kids so I instructed the guards to break the padlock on the gate. The commotion that was going on would have woken the dead – and I know half my neighbourhood was awake peeking through the windows wondering what was going on.

Eventually the lock was broken and by this time another security back up vehicle had been deployed so I was feeling somewhat safe and the kids were also reassured. Before I was allowed to go in the guards held me back and said they’d go in first and scale the house to make sure there were no intruders or anything and also go check in the room at the back if Wycliffe was there. I was very grateful to have them look out for us like that. I know it is their job but it still felt good. In the interim the cops advised me to fire Wycliffe because this wasn’t responsible of him.

The guards came back to say it was clear and also no one was inside. I let the kids in and locked the house and came back outside. The cops returned to the station after making sure were ok and the guards stayed in the compound until the askari for the night wasn’t deployed. There were lots more dramas after that because Wycliffe suddenly appeared from goodness knows where and was whisked off to the cop station by the guards for questioning.

So now, Wycliffe has been fired, the cops did their ‘Utumishi Kwa Wote’ thing and the Securex guards will continue to do their good work and let me sleep at night without worrying about anything.

I should write a book…