RIPPED (OFF)

A MAN'S MEAT IS HIS NEIGHBOR'S POISON.

Here's my home- a magnificent penthouse; although now taunted as gaudy and its rooms bad-mouthed as dowdy by my siblings.

It was sited on a luxurious farm settlement that stretched lushly to the East, into beautifully entrenched artificial water bodies artfully connected to an over-water villa about a kilometer away.

Furthermore, as one drove in, its right side would be marked off from its left by a gigantic artificial waterfall at the end of a beautiful grass landscape that unfurled smoothly, expanding the compound into several kilometers of a golf course heading towards the eastern wing.

It stretched further Westward into a bullring and a boxing boot hedged about by a mini-stadium- The Arena; and further left into many hectares of safari at the border of the golf landscape.

The house was one of its types - an unusual architectural masterpiece, beautiful for its ambiance and enchanting sweet-scented flowers.

It stood proudly on the outskirts of the cosmopolitan city of Caritas Ville called Vavula.

Flanked by hundreds of kilometers of dense vegetation on its North towards Bourdilon, It housed a large car park in its basement; and yet, reserved many unoccupied rooms on the ground floor even after the stewards had been spaciously quartered.

Then, our home on the first floor, a library on the second; both sandwiched between a deluxe restaurant, a gym, and a spa, which like our home floor was furnished with oversized glass windows, on the third floor. Lastly, a casino and a banquet hall plateaued the apex.

At its far back, there was a winery and several kilometers of flourishing multi-million dollar orchards of pinot noir, pomegranate, cherries, and grapes.

At the foot of the building beyond the waterfall, an implicit statement of affluence was subtly made in various brands of luxury cars flanking the building.

That was for the visual patronage of enthusiasts who often than not went green with envy. But, ostensibly, that was exactly what Scott envisaged when he separated the cars from tens of the others as they holed away in the basement.

Meanwhile, if I could borrow from the numerous vain words from the vocabularies of the media, my father, Albert Sheriff, was an accomplished farmer first; then, a decorated businessman, a philanthropist, and an ultra-rich kingmaker.

He was one of the few in Caritas Ville with an overwhelmingly lofty social status and the only one that boasted a known source of wealth - one thing the reporters have done well not to forget to emphasize.

Note that Vavula was a harbor town with a marina that boasted a rich fleet of superyachts at its dock. Most families found it more suitable to travel on the water and therefore, owned more boats and, or yachts than they did cars.

The marina was littered with yachts and boats extending over several miles.

Quite a few of them were custom-made, and more than half the number of them belonged to my father's visitors and business associates who sailed down day and night in their hundreds daily for a boat race game at the sea or a trade at the penthouse, contributing to the traffic of glamour at the marina.

Recently, it became a waste of effort to number the yachts at the dock. The amount of wealth held in the price of these luxurious crafts was why the reporters dubbed Vavula Marina the richest Venice in the world.

I had reservations for their words but I couldn't but credit their perspective this time, however grudgingly.

That notwithstanding, their level of sycophancy and especially, their incessant flocking around my home in pretext to cover the arrival of the animal that would make the next big story in the pet magazines, or to capture the new exotic brand of wine queued for a glamorous appearance at the next big occasion vexed me in no mean way.

They knew as much as we did that they didn't paint our father in beautiful words for nothing. Our father, being very generous with money, would usually gift them with a lot of it so he could escape with his time whenever they came making demands on it, as was always the case.

Moreover, they and our father knew too well that he already had that which the media coverage promised, and so, didn't need to be present in their purported interviews since as always, they would have forged a story they would sell to the public ahead of their coming.

He would usually leave them to Scott and you already know their history.

Now, here's where my disgust for them stemmed from.

Scott would do his job; that would mean that an interview didn't happen but yet, the media spaces would be inundated the next day with ridiculous headline tagging with father whatever new fancy word that expressed their sycophancy.

Although my father knew that the media would tell a good tale about him, he however maintained consistency in his striving to put up a name in the public domain.

"Not being on the lips of the people is bad for business, it won't be long before you won't be in their minds," he would counter whenever asked to slow down on things.

I would sit back and wonder how gnarly demanding it could be to be my father - to fight to exhaustion daily to remain relevant.

I wondered how much time and money it cost to sustain enormous goodwill in the eyes of the public starting from the family where he was our father and mother.

Narrow it down further and you find the phase where he's my driver, since Martha.

There were the stewards to whom he was a great boss and a philanthropist. The paychecks never stopped when due, with the increments that duly came with being promoted.

The retired retained their benefits as in the days of their active services, especially those who had decades of services, regardless of whether their roles were scrapped or they resigned.

For instance, the teachers who home-schooled us never left and would never need to leave, except in boxes. The nanny's stories were not different from that of the cooks, gardeners, and scouts. They all might never leave. They didn't have to.

To the budding politicians, he was a ready-made money bag and a good man as long as he bankrolled their ambition.

And to the established and mostly the corrupt ones, a sanctimonious threat that spoilt businesses and should be dealt with from afar, if and only when he can't be completely avoided.

What the police thought about him reflected off the mirror through which the media saw him. So, to them, he was a good man.

Then again, there were the butt-licker reporters to whom he was a generous saint – a fair assessment I should say though, after all, has he been stuffing them with numbly number of gifts: money, cars, plane tickets, etc to do nothing?

Many other times, I tried to sum the price in time and money what it took him to tour Panama, Brazil, Kenya, Australia, and New Zealand, scouting for exotic animals fit to make explosive appearances on the front page of the next edition of best pet and wildlife magazine.

Or, in search of animals charismatically fit for capturing in the next blockbuster movie.

I didn't stop wondering until when it became my opinion that one should work as hard as my father did only if the salvation of an imminently perishing generation was saddled on one's sole shoulders, and that was far from the case here.

Other times when he wasn't doing any of those above and had not jetted out to South Africa, Hungary, Italy, or Mexico to connect with yet another vintner who might spare one or two winemakers for him to incorporate into the already teaming collection of experts living on the farm, then, there would have been a big game, an exhibition or an auction of a wine brand or animals.

Meanwhile, I loved animals especially the dogs and the horses and we had several hundred of them. So, I would spend hours each day riding them from one end of the farm to the other.

This was the chief reason why I still lived in Vavula.

I have ridden horses since I was a kid. A few of them still recognized me. The others who forgot me still, however, retained dim memories of the tricks when we raced. In addition to riding the horses, like when I was a child, I enjoyed my time alone in the tree house.

My treehouse was built at the northern axis, between the boxing boot and the golf course, far away from the penthouse and closer to the wall of the fence when angling towards the front gate.

Staying in the tree house used to leave me with a comforting feeling of privacy and exclusivity as it was well detached from noise.

The penthouse always buzzed with people who had no consanguineous ties with us- housekeepers, senior farm workers, vets, gardeners, security guards, and their families.

There were also wine tasters who were too drunk to go home after the event of the previous night. Yet, there abounded many unoccupied stale-smelling rooms lodging hundreds of squirrels.