“You have insufficient balance. Press one to red…” arghhhh! I hate that lady’s voice, whoever she is. She must get a kick out of doing this to me. The time is slightly past midnight. Where am I, you ask? Well, that is the very question I am asking myself. All I know is I am at a very dark and desolate stretch of a dirt road. Looking at the dashboard, the fuel gauge needle is almost at ‘E’.
‘C’mon, c’mon!!” I desperately urge my old jalopy to not die on me. That would be the last straw. I really need to somehow contact my friends. What started as a convoy road-trip to Malindi somehow turned to a nightmare. Why in God’s name did I agree with Maina and the gang to take this shortcut which Katana swore he was familiar with? Those idiots in their brand new whips sped off and left me in a cloud of dust; my old imitation of a vehicle just could not keep up. I somehow contrived to get off the main dirt-road and here I am, bang in the middle of nowhere, just like Eustace Bang and Courage the Cowardly Dog.
The vehicle suddenly shudders, the engine going silent. Oh no! I am officially out of fuel. I desperately try to get her running again but all she does is splutter and stutter. Pulling up to the roadside, I try to call Maina once more. No airtime. I also do not have data bundles so at this point WhatsApp is just another app in my phone. I try to Okoa Jahazi and the lady politely reminds me that I have reached my maximum credit limit. Wait, I can simply redeem my Bonga points! Yes, here goes *126*…………. Hang on, it hits me that bae redeemed my points yesterday for bundles! Argh! There is even no point of checking my Mpesa balance because earlier in the day I had cleaned out my account. As for my flashbacks, I had sent all of them to my friends and not a single one of those lunatics had bothered to call. As they say when it rains it pours, just ask that naomba sirkaaal iingilie kati lady. I roll down my window and try to peer outside for any sign of life but I am just surrounded by pure, pitch black darkness, this is the stuff of horror movies I tell you.
Having heard my fair share of tales about how motorists whose cars have broken down in remote spots have ended up being attacked and even killed, I quickly disembark from the car, lock it and scurry towards the nearest bush before any would be thief spotted me. I must have lay there for a while because sleep somehow overtook me most probably due to exhaustion. I had even started to dream about chillaxing on the beach in Malindi. Suddenly, I was jarred back to reality by a thorn prick on my back. As I was trying to recollect where I was I heard the sound of car engines from a distance, I slunk back into the bush fearing that I could be highway robbers. The cars stopped next to my jalopy, people alighted and started inspecting my car. Needless to say I started trembling. It is only when one of them spoke that I realized it was my crew who must have realized that I was not following them. Long story short, I gave them a tongue lashing for not calling me back despite getting my flashbacks, we managed to tow my car to a petrol station and were able to proceed with the journey.
After that experience I started to rue not having airtime when you need it more so during an emergency. As I was looking at the various options to remedy this, I came across the new Safaricom post pay tariff dubbed Advantage Plus. Post pay basically allows you to call to your fill then pay at the end of the month. I chose the Advantage Plus Superior which entitled me to 1,500 minutes of talk time to all networks, 1,500 sms to all networks and a whooping 3GB of data. Talk of being sorted, with all those minutes of talk time, sms and data I was assured that I could at least get someone to help out if I was in a fix. I mean it’s hard to ignore 1,500 sms and endless WhatsApp messages even if you decide to ignore my calls. So if you aren’t already on Safaricom postpaid tariff my advice is that just dial *100# on your Safaricom line and select the 5th option before you find yourself in a similar dire situation.