People assume that the universe works in bewildering, mysterious ways... Nonsense. It does not. It’s really not that cryptic at all. Don’t believe me?
Hear me out.
Let us, for the sake of argument, imagine you unexpectedly find yourself—without so much as a warning—reincarnated as a ghastly gastropod. Yes, a slimy slug without even the decency of a shell to hide in.
Just yesterday, life was grand. You were cheerfully cruising around in your cute little convertible, entirely free of care. You were blasting your dreadful taste in music at ear-splitting volume, cutting off octogenarians in wheelchairs, and expertly blocking two handicapped parking spaces at the same time because walking three extra feet to the store entrance simply wasn’t for you. You were casually flipping cigarette butts at babies in strollers and, for good measure, running over dog tails—because why not? You get the picture.
But then, out of nowhere, the 500-ton semi-truck you were tailgating for two solid miles—the one with the funny little biohazard sticker on the back—suddenly detonates. Just like that. A mushroom cloud. A nuclear-level blast that promptly pulverises you, your adorable convertible, and everything else within a tidy 50-mile radius.
You’d think this would be the part where you ascend to some celestial paradise, greeted by the soft singing of angels and all that fluffy nonsense.
Not so.
Instead, you’re graced—no, gifted—with a life rerun. You didn’t ask for one, of course. You certainly didn’t expect it to happen. After all, you were invincible, weren’t you? Immune to karma, the universe, or whatever cosmic ledger people prattle on about. Unfortunately, there’s been a slight miscalculation. You see, as a human being, you were utterly insufferable. Truly a nuisance.
So, since you performed so egregiously last time down here, there’s a catch.
This time, you get another shot at life—but with a slightly different design. A snail. And not just any snail, mind you, but a naked one. Either in a stylish, sultry black or—if you’ve truly run out of luck—in dog-turd brown. That’s right: you don’t even get the flashy, lovable house your more respectable, avant-garde cousins carry on their backs.
Gone are the glorious days when you could look down on everyone and everything, throwing tantrums at people you deemed less important or insufficiently impressive. No more dramatic entrances in front of cafes, your car roof folded neatly down, you dolled up and dressed to the nines, looking like the main character in a Viagra commercial. No, my friend, those days are well and truly over.
Now your waking hours are spent anxiously crawling along sidewalks, leaving behind a glossy trail of ooze as you go. You live in constant fear of being squashed—by joggers, wheelchair users (rings a bell?) or inattentive pedestrians staring at their smartphones. If you’re lucky, someone might smirk and step over you with mild disgust. More likely, though, you’ll feel a sudden and decisive splat. Sorry.
And the fun doesn’t stop there. You worry a lot about birds now. Remember them? The ones you used to gun down on your property with that air rifle of yours. Oh, how funny it was to see them flip backwards, dead, or explode in a puff of feathers! Well, turns out birds have an excellent memory—and they’re back with a vengeance, circling above your slimy, defenceless little head.
If by some miraculous stroke of good luck you manage to slither your way into someone’s garden for a leafy feast, you’d better pray the owner isn’t one of those savages with a rusty pair of kitchen scissors, ready to slice you in two without so much as an apology.
And then there’s the matter of the dogs. You remember the tails you used to run over in your little convertible? Karma hasn’t forgotten. Dogs are out there now, lurking, and at any moment you could find yourself neck-deep in steaming excrement. Maybe they don’t even mean to do it; maybe they do. Either way, the universe will ensure you’re fully baptised in the justice you so richly deserve.
You might object that your gooey lifespan as a slug is mercifully short, that salvation will come sooner rather than later—saved by the bell, so to speak. But what if that line of reasoning is faulty? What if time, that slippery devil, is merely a function of size? In other words, what if a slug’s existence feels exactly as long and grueling as a human lifespan?
Or worse—what if you’re doomed to an uncountable number of reruns, trapped in an eternal slimy slog, so the Lord can make absolutely, positively certain that this time, the message really sticks?
How do you know it won’t? You don’t, do you?
And so, the upshot of all this philosophical chatter is simple: Be a good person. Help others. Don’t look down on anyone—lift people up instead. Don’t judge. Be honest. Live with genuine integrity.
Smile—it’s easy. Be nice—that one’s less easy. But do it anyway, and you’ll find that miracles tend to happen to people who try.
Which brings me rather awkwardly to my American Express Credit Card, which, on this particular occasion, in Nairobi, March 2012, persistently refused to perform its duties…
Now, any unorthodox world voyager worth their salt has, at some point during their traveling bonanza, realised one undeniable truth: the only form of compensation you can truly trust is cash.
There is an inherent grace—no, dignity—in pulling a crumpled bundle of bills from your pocket. Nothing else quite matches the power of that moment. Diamonds, pearls, or perhaps a stack of Krugerrand may come close, but they lack the rugged honesty of cash. Because, let’s face it: cash is real. Credit cards are not.
Cash smells of blood and tears, of the honest sweat it took to acquire it. A credit card? It smells like Tupperware. Plastic. Cheap and soulless, the currency equivalent of a soggy handshake.
Cash, on the other hand, declares with confidence: “I have earned this, and it is mine!” And unless a knife-wielding henchman armed with a Russian-made AK-47 happens to convince you otherwise, the money will remain yours.
From bribes to bailouts, there is little that cash cannot do. And, importantly, no nosy government entity will ever learn about it. The notoriously greedy IRS won’t know you exist. They can’t take your hard-earned money to fund something as trivial as wars or to invest in surveillance drones tracking your every move. What you buy with cash is private, sacred even, and if you want it to remain a secret, it will.
But I digress.
My wife and I were short of Kenyan funds, and after many fruitless attempts to withdraw money from a string of obstinate ATMs, we were nearing desperation. None of them worked. Well, that’s not entirely fair—they did work, just not with American Express cards.
As a decades-long Amex user, I am no stranger to rejection. I know the routine. It’s a symphony of being laughed at, escorted to the exit, and politely—yet firmly—refused service.
These cards do look impressive, to be fair. For a piece of plastic, they scream sophistication. But they might as well be museum artefacts because no one, and I mean no one, has ever heard of them. Let alone accepts them.
Not even in America, which, when you think about it, is comically ironic. You’d probably have better luck buying a sandwich on Mars with an Amex than you would on Earth.
But, there was a silver lining. After hours of combing through the internet—a process that felt akin to mining for gold with a plastic spork—we unearthed a hidden treasure: an American Express Travel Agency just 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away.
Naturally, a swift and sobering inventory of our fuel, food, and water supplies was in order. Could we withstand the Herculean 15-hour slog across Nairobi’s legendary traffic hellscape? Possibly. Though I half-expected to perish halfway there, a tragic monument to the absurdities of modern banking.
In all fairness, the journey turned out to be mercifully brief and shockingly uneventful. No spontaneous combustion of vehicles, no flocks of rogue chickens blocking intersections, no wild-eyed matatu drivers playing high-stakes chicken. We arrived relatively unscathed.
Locating the agency itself, however, required the time-honoured approach of “asking around,” which is far more reliable in these situations than Google Maps will ever be. At last, we found the office, and what awaited us was nothing short of a miracle: a warm, genuine welcome that felt so out of place it almost made me suspicious.
I approached the benevolent receptionist and laid out our tragic saga—American Express cards, uncooperative ATMs, general despair. She listened sympathetically, nodded, and then, without hesitation, picked up the phone.
Exactly 13.5 seconds later, salvation arrived.
In walked Henry.
Henry introduced himself as the Managing Director of the company and, as if divinely ordained, the man responsible for all things American Express. His presence was a revelation. Henry exuded competence, efficiency, and the quiet authority of someone who could single-handedly organise a United Nations peacekeeping mission with nothing but a clipboard and a stern look.
I didn’t even need cash anymore; I felt like a crisp hundred-dollar bill just being in his presence.
Henry requested to have a gander at my Amex card. With the precision of a museum curator, he turned it over, examined its embossing, and held it to the light as though checking for hidden treasure maps. Finally, he delivered his verdict:
“With this particular prestigious piece of plastic, sir, you could acquire a Fabergé Egg, the Mona Lisa, or—should you be so inclined—the Death Star itself. That said, withdrawing a modest sum of cash from any ATM in Africa, barring Mogadishu, ought to be well within its capabilities.”
The gravitas of his tone nearly convinced me I was holding Excalibur, not an American Express card.
To my utter disbelief, Henry promised to resolve our predicament immediately, in person. He then inquired about our transportation situation. I hesitantly pointed to our battle-worn Land Rover, half-expecting him to politely suggest we hitch a donkey instead. Instead, Henry strode toward the vehicle without hesitation, climbed into the back seat, and proceeded to settle in as though this battered contraption were his personal town car.
Nicole and I exchanged glances, both of us now fully convinced we’d stumbled into a parallel universe where managing directors from reputable agencies moonlight as personal troubleshooters for stranded travellers. We discreetly confirmed that Henry was not, in fact, carrying an AK-47 before rolling out of the parking lot.
Unlike us, Henry navigated Nairobi’s infamous traffic with the cool confidence of a man who had personally tamed the chaos. Within minutes, we arrived at an ATM. I approached the machine with cautious optimism, inserted my card, punched in the sacred digits, and—
Rejected. Again.
Now the real magic happened. Henry, entirely unperturbed, pulled out his phone and calmly dialled a number. I imagine it was a direct line to the President of America, or perhaps the Almighty Himself. Moments later, the ATM screen flickered, went black, and—much to the dismay of the surrounding shops—the entire block followed suit.
Henry turned to us with a reassuring nod. “There was a glitch in the system,” he explained coolly. “I ordered all the ATMs in Nairobi to be shut down and rebooted.”
Apparently, Henry wielded the power to bring the financial infrastructure of an entire city to its knees. Meanwhile, the unfortunate shopkeeper behind the ATM—who had now become collateral damage—sat helplessly in the dark behind his counter, no doubt wondering what he had done to offend the gods that day.
I was truly amazed. Henry had brought an entire block of Nairobi’s financial infrastructure to its knees with a single phone call. At the same time, I couldn’t help but worry that somewhere across the city, hundreds of frustrated souls now staring at lifeless ATM screens might, at some point, track down the white Muzungu (Gringo) who’d caused this mayhem. I prayed their accounts hadn’t been permanently deleted, leaving them to curse my name for generations to come.
Ten minutes later, the machine sputtered back to life with a series of hopeful squeaks, like a small appliance returning from the brink of death. The shops behind it followed suit, lights flickering back on. I stared at the ATM, wary, half-expecting it to either devour my card or burst into flames as retribution.
But then—Taah-Taah!—it worked.
With a triumphant whir, the machine dispensed a glorious wad of Kenyan shillings into my trembling hands. Miraculous. Henry looked on with the serene satisfaction of a magician who’d just pulled off his grand finale.
Clearly, this Henry-Man was no ordinary managing director; he was a force of nature. And as it turned out, this was merely the opening act of our good fortune.
On the drive back, Henry shared that his company was in the process of constructing a state-of-the-art, fifteen-star hotel in Nairobi—a towering marvel that would make the Burj Al Arab in Dubai look like a bus stop and Versailles seem like a rundown dog shelter. Every room, he explained, would be a monument to luxury, decorated with only the finest art.
Now, I don’t claim to be a man of great timing, but at that moment, manus manum lavat—one hand washes the other—I allowed it to casually slip that, among my many other talents, I happened to be a wildlife photographer of some repute. Modest, of course, but perfectly capable of delivering the exquisite art his hotel might require. Henry almost raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
Even better, though I didn’t know it at the time, Henry would soon introduce us to a man who remains, to this day, one of the most generous, helpful, and downright extraordinary individuals I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.
His name was James.
But that, Y’all, is another story.
Marcel Romdane
My favourite, most cherished Elephant print went to Henry
