That which is won ill, will never wear well, for there is a curse that attends it which will waste it

Last week on the streets of Nairobi, a friend and I met a colleague that we used to work with many years ago . It was somewhat of a nostalgic meeting bearing in mind all the trials, intrigues and tribulations that we went through together when we were in our earlier corporate careers.

Having not seen him for close to a decade, we were curious and interested to find out how he was getting along.

After the usual pleasantries asking about our health and families, we got down to discussing the issue of business opportunities.

He informed us that after trying to set up and run a business in Kenya over a period of five years, he finally threw in the towel when the business remained in the red and nibbled away at his meagre start-up capital, which he

indicated was borrowed from friends, banks and foes alike. To avoid an inevitable auction of some key family assets that he had charged to the bank, he opted to "skip town" and go and seek his fortune in a neighbouring country.

His decision was by no means fruitless. He had since built a thriving business and was highly respected by the bourgeois and political elite. His contacts in the upper crust of the society were by and by the envy of any political spin doctor or entrepreneur that he came across. From hum he came across. From humble beginnings trading in this and that, he had managed to have a significant stake in several asset classes, including real estate, stocks and bonds.

As you would expect, we were keen to learn the magic formula that our friend had used to build his personal balance sheet. After some hesitation, he finally opened up and told us how he had leveraged an environment with systemic corruption to acquire his small fortune. According to him, he had emerged in a country with a fluid business environment, with little government regulation to check en trepreneurs. The general trepreneurs. The general squalor of business-government dealings was as at unprecedented level.

According to our friends observation, the leader of the country is an admirer of industry captains and has assembled a cabinet full of cronies and mediocrities eager to do their bidding.

Over the past couple of years, the government has degenerated into a sink of iniquity. A tremendous amount of money changes hands as businessmen and legislators traffic in mutual manipulation. The interesting thing about this intriguing scenario is that businessmen in scenario is that businessmen in the country prefer to think themselves as victims of political extortion, not as initiator litical extortion, not as initia of bribes.

By this time, my friend and I were on the edge of our seats and staring wide eyed at him. He was telling us, albeit implicitly, that he had willingly staggered into corruption. As far as he was concerned, he had no qualm paying bribes and had actually provisioned for it as a cost in his profit and loss statement. On one particular business deal, he had perpetuated the legislative system to get an exclusive concession for the exploitation of a valuable but scarce resource. The proceeds from the concession had further enabled him to comprise dissenting legislators, who true to the old maxim all had prices labelled to their heads. To maintain an air of sobriety and innocence, he had opted to float serenely above the bustle, pretending of any wrongdoing. It was at this point that we started wondering why with all this glitz, glamour and as cribed power, our friend was walking the streets of Nairobi alking the streets of Nairobi like any other average Ken yan. With his wealth and status, one would have expected him to favour a quieter, serene experi ence as enjoyed by the well heeled, away from the hustle and bustle of commoners hustling on the streets figuring out when lady luck would touch them.
Acquire wealth He probably read the expression on our faces and decided to let the cat out of the bag. The system that he leveraged unreservedly to acquire wealth, is the same one with equanimity that had stripped him bare.

He left us hanging in mid sentence with the quotation "that which is won ill, will never wear well, for there is a curse that attends it which will waste it