Paper trails perish in the printer’s teeth
the development fund is a magician’s hat
billions go in, but only a rabbit comes out.
Audit reports are ghosts in the archives,
haunting the halls of the County Assembly
with the scent of unaccounted for
While the bursaries bleed out into private pockets,
the child of the lake learns to count
using the empty shells of yesterday’s promises
They call it “reallocation,” a fancy word for theft,
moving the money from the borehole to the fuel.
The ghost-workers collect their salaries in silence,
haunting the payroll like shadows in the night
The oversight committee is a dinner party
where the watchers and the watched share a plate,
and the bill is sent to the widow in Nyamasaria
who pays her taxes with the coins from her hem
If the walls of the Treasury could speak,
they would scream the names of the Lords of the Lake
who built mansions on the foundations of schools
They drive through the mud in Sh. 20 million cruisers,
splashing the children who walk barefoot to a future
that has already been sold in a shadowy tender
The ghost of the auditor still wanders the halls,
carrying a ledger that no one wants to open,
waiting for a day when the math finally adds up.
-Tuesday.the.great
