Safara goes to China and comes back with ideas for a fortune 

The trip that came about courtesy of that mad “Industrial Espionage" job that Kerubo and I pulled off for Mr Zhang Li, the multi-millionaire (in yuan) owner of Gang Dong Mall. 

Read: Pope pops up one last time during Safara’s petrifying escape from Athi River villa

He was so pleased with the work we did that he offered me an all–expenses–paid trip to his home province of Guangdong. “When I was five years old,” the seventy-year-old mall mandarin told me, “We had a great famine in China, and I remember being very honk-lee from when I was five years old. When I was 15, we had cultural level-you shone (revolution), and I no go high school from when I am 15 until 19!

When I was 25 years old, I begin work in local shopping centre. Yet by the time 30, thanks to great leadership of Deng Xiaoping, I was able to open my own small electronical sale shop…”

The rest, that 40 years later he owned an entire shopping mall in Kenya, named after his home province, was left unsaid.

I flew from Nairobi to Dubai, and then onto Shaghai. And although I have been on planes before outside Kenya, once to Addis Ababa, and another time to Dar-es salaam on biashara, I must admit it was my first long-haul flight. 

Read: Safara turns chauffeur, finds himself in the middle of an industrial espionage

But I was too excited to be exhausted!

From Shanghai International, it was a short flight to the city of Guangzhou, where I was met at the airport by a petite woman called Lily; and a chain –smoking driver called Fuanco (whom I straight off re-named “Franco) who would drive me from place-to-place for the remainder of the trip – always with the windows of the smooth Chinese EV fully rolled down to let the smoke billow all about us, before rolling out of the window to pollute the world. 

“Hallow," Lily says in a voice soft and smooth as a breeze. “I am business friend of Mr Zhang li of Gang Dong Mall, Nai-lo-bee. I will be showing you all around Guangdong.”

“And I am Mr Mike Safara from Nairobi,” I say. “I will be happy to be taken anywhere by you.” 

The silly joke flies by her pretty head.

Franco drives us to the lovely ‘Delta hotel’ that lies beside the Pearl River, and Lily checks me in, then they both disappear, Lily leaving me 350 dollars that she says is my “spending money for the week from Mr Li.”

“This is what it must be like to be a rich boy in high school,” I say. 

This time, I am rewarded by a thin grin from Lily, before she says a quick “tse tse,” and makes her exit. 350 dollars in Chinese Yuan- 2500 Chinese Yuan.

That is 45,000 in our shillings.

 I do feel loaded!

Read: Because the mountain will not come, Safara starts on a tricky trip to the mountain

The river view from the delta is of boats and ferries. 

When I step out of the hotel and into the street, I find myself in a real hustlers’ world. 

Here in Guangzhou city. 

I explore the long, endless, and busy, hectic roads of clubs and restaurants, laundries and liquor stores, clothes and gift shops, stationery and butcheries, glasses and electronics.

In life, if you have lost your soul, you can find it and buy it back here in Guangzhou. Broken dreams? They also fix those.

And it is in that spirit of optimism, and another 350 dollars from Lily, that five days later, I am driven to a city called Hengqin by Franco who smokes a stink up all the way. 

All annoyed thoughts are soothed once we are in that eerily quiet, magnificently pretty city and settled in at ‘The Simian’ where I am received by…an AI robot.

Fuanco leaves, and I am left to the TLC of Chinese bots. Hengqin, this beautiful small city, is quiet and has 50,000 folks, yet is aiming to get at least 600,000 by 2030 as it seeks to become a tax haven to citizens, from Macau to Macedonia to Maroc.

If I had a degree in tax finance, I would make a killing by ‘hanging in Hengqin,’ but all I have is street smarts as a bona fide Hustler. 

Perhaps I could import AI robots from Hengqin to Nairobi? I hear AI is the future, so kuna fortunes to be made in that sector.

Four days later, Lily comes to pick me, looking lovelier than ever.

“We are going to Zhuhai, which is where I am from.”

“Taking me home to finally meet the parents?"

“Ha ha,” she laughs. “Mr Li says you are funny guy …”

“Is Zhang also from Zhuhai?

You ask him when you get back in Nai-lo-bee,” she says curtly.

But after we’ve had dinner, sweet sour fish, greasy veggies, anchovies, chicken, duck, mushrooms, pork and still – wiggling little eels that big France and tiny Lily compete in wolfing down to my horror, and watched a musical at the Zhuhai opera house, and drunk a lot of rice wine, Lily gets a little flirtatious.

We leave Franco in the sleek X-Peng electric sedan. And walk down Lovers’ Lane to the Gangzhu’ao bridge, and stand there watching the twinkling city lights, far across the water. China is beautiful!

When I turn to go, Lily leans in and gives me a quick peck on the cheek that feels like a light feather brushed by.

I want more, but she deftly moves out of my reach, and giggling, skips back along the way we came as I say: "You are my celestial star and universal fantasy..." 

My final week in China was spent in the town of Foshan. It seems shabbier, like Nairobi. I stay in a cheap hotel, and save on the 350 dollars of the week by eating street food, which is surprisingly tasty, the way mutura and boiled eggs are in Nai.

I go to a club called AfriKaraoke and make contact with a Kenyan called Dan who lives in Foshan, and we agree on an export-import partnership to be called “Foshan Dan Ltd.”

I need money, not the ego of my name in a company.

He will supply electronics and textiles to me to sell in Nairobi.

In my mind’s eye, I picture a chain of supermarkets – “Super Safaras” as I turn 70 in 2055 AD, an old man living on Easy Street.

But, first, I need to look for 50,0000 Chinese Yuan, capital for the first imports.

[email protected]