Uncle Rwamiti visits a successful nephew and discovers that the family has been preparing the wrong person for an uncertain future.

The gate recognised Johnson’s car before Johnson had finished complaining about artificial intelligence. It slid open without a greeting.

“Even your gatekeeper has been disrupted,” I said.
“He’s at the back, Uncle.”
“Doing what?”
“Watching the cameras.”

We drove past a hedge trimmed so evenly that I briefly wondered whether the gardener, too, had been moved to a screen. Johnson’s house stood among mature trees in Karen, Nairobi. There was a broad lawn, a veranda and enough space between neighbours for a family disagreement to remain a family disagreement. My nephew had done well. He had acquired the qualifications, entered a multinational, survived several reorganisations and risen to a senior regional position. His children attended good schools. His mortgage was substantial enough to suggest confidence in the future. Until recently, that confidence had appeared justified. Inside, his wife, Anne, hugged me and said, “Perhaps you can talk to him.”

“About what?”
“He keeps saying we must prepare the children for the future.”
“A responsible father.”
“He says it at three in the morning.”

Johnson’s company sold information to businesses. Not newspapers. Expensive information. Market reports. Competitor analysis. Industry forecasts. The sort of document that arrived with a restrained cover and an invoice that required approval from somebody important. Its business depended on collecting material, making sense of it and presenting conclusions clients trusted. Now clients were asking why they should renew subscriptions when their own staff could ask a machine for a market briefing before breakfast.

“The machine can be wrong,” Johnson said.
“So can an expensive consultant.”
“Ours goes through review.”
“Does the client know what that review protects him from?”

He looked at me. On his laptop was a presentation headed Accelerating Our AI Transformation.

“Who prepared that?”
“An internal team.”
“With AI?”
“Probably.”

The presentation proposed more automation, fewer routine research tasks and a substantial reduction in junior recruitment. Johnson closed it.

“The board wants us to defend our margins.”
“And you?”
“I want us to have a business.”

For the first time that evening, he sounded less like a senior manager explaining a situation and more like a man inside one. At supper, Anne raised the matter of their son. Brian had finished university fourteen months earlier. He had a degree in economics, several certificates and an increasingly sophisticated understanding of online application portals.

“We’re considering a master’s,” Anne said.
“In what?” I asked.
“Business analytics.”
“Why?”
“There’s demand.”

Brian put down his fork.

“That’s what they said about economics.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. Johnson recovered first.

“Your degree is useful. You need to position yourself.”
“I’ve positioned myself everywhere.”

He counted on his fingers.

“Banks. Consulting firms. NGOs. Graduate programmes. Uncle David sent my CV to someone. Your friend said he would follow up.”
“You must keep trying.”
“I am trying.”

Anne intervened.

“Let him eat.”

Outside, the garden lights came on. Somewhere beyond the veranda, a person was working to keep the house looking effortless. Later, Brian joined me beneath the trees.

“My father thinks I lack initiative.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes.”

It was an answer worth staying for. He showed me a report he had prepared on retail businesses. It was polished, clear and full of confident recommendations.

“How did you make this?”
“AI helped with the structure and analysis.”
“Which recommendation worries you?”

He scrolled.

“I don’t know.”
“Which shopkeeper have you discussed it with?”
“None. It was a portfolio project.”

I asked him to explain the sales figures. He could describe the trend. He could not tell me where the figures had come from. He looked embarrassed.

“I should have checked.”
“Yes.”
“Everybody says we must demonstrate our skills.”

I handed back the phone.

“Then choose something small enough that you can stand behind it.”

He leaned back.

“My friend got a job through his aunt. He didn’t have to produce any of this.”
“Can he do the work?”
“He seems to be learning.”
“And you would like the same chance.”
“Yes.”

There it was. The young man wanted access to a place where he could become useful. The people guarding the entrance wanted him to arrive already useful. In the morning, Johnson took a call on the veranda. There were phrases about efficiency, alignment and difficult decisions. I went walking through the garden. When he finished, he found me beside a tree whose roots had lifted the paving.

“We’re cutting the analyst intake,” he said.
“Because the machine can do their work?”
“Much of the first draft. Summaries. Basic comparisons. Data preparation.”
“What did you do when you joined?”
“Exactly that sort of thing.”
“And how did you become the man who checks it?”

He looked towards the house.

“My first boss was impossible. Every number, he wanted the source. Every conclusion, he asked what would make it false.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“I hated him for about a year.”
“An expensive year?”
“For the company? Probably.”

I pointed to the lifted paving.

“Your gardener can remove these roots and make the path level.”
“He’ll kill the tree.”

Johnson looked down.

“Yes,” he said. “I see where you’re going.”

But roots are an easy argument. Salaries must be paid. He told me the junior staff were already learning faster with the new tools. One analyst had completed in a day something that once took most of a week.

“Then perhaps the tool helps her learn,” I said.
“It does.”
“Will you hire another person like her?”

He rubbed his forehead.

“That is a different meeting.”

At breakfast, Anne asked whether I thought Brian should do the master’s.

“I think we should first know what you are buying.”
“Education.”
“Perhaps. What would Brian be able to do afterwards that he cannot begin learning now?”

Johnson objected.

“A good institution gives you more than content. Networks. Exposure. Credibility.”
“Agreed.”
“And some employers require the qualification.”
“Then those are reasons to investigate it.”

Anne looked relieved.

“So you’re not against it?”
“I have paid enough school fees to be cautious about becoming against education at my age.”

Brian smiled.

“But,” I continued, “before the deposit, speak to recent graduates. Find out where they work, how they got there and what they actually use. Ask who struggles, too.”

Anne turned to her son.

“You can do that this week.”
“Some of them won’t reply.”
“Then we discover something about the network before paying for it,” she said.

Johnson laughed. It was the first unguarded laugh I had heard from him. He drove me out later to buy something Anne had requested. In traffic, he returned to the subject of qualifications.

“Sometimes I wonder whether we needed half of them.”
“Could you do your present job without knowing anything?”
“Of course not.”
“Would every capable person need your exact certificates?”
“No.”

We watched a young man weave between cars selling phone accessories. Johnson said, “My first interview came through someone my father knew.”

“So did several of my opportunities.”
“Was I undeserving?”
“Someone opened a door. You still had to work. Someone else may have been equally capable and remained outside.”

He was quiet.

“Connections can help an employer find a good person,” I said. “They can also help him avoid looking for one.”
“What about people who get jobs with forged papers?”
“A forged certificate tells you the certificate was not properly checked. To know whether its owner can do the job, you must examine the work.”
“And if he can?”
“Then you still have the forgery to deal with.”

Johnson nodded. At the next junction, his phone offered a faster route. Several other cars appeared to receive the same advice. We all turned left. Back at the house, Johnson opened a report his company had sold to a client.

“This is what I’m trying to protect.”
“May I read it?”

He brought tea. The report concerned expansion into a new market. It was intelligent and orderly. It offered the comfort of a complicated world made manageable.

“Who checks whether a distributor actually has the capacity he claims?” I asked.
“Our local researchers, in some assignments.”
“Who knows when an interviewee is telling you what he thinks will secure an investment?”
“The experienced people.”
“Who follows up when the recommendation fails?”

He hesitated.

“That depends on the contract.”

We sat with that. There were still questions worth paying somebody to investigate. But it did not follow that his company would be the one paid to investigate them. Other firms could build local networks. Clients could hire their own people. A rival might combine technology and fieldwork better.

“The company could still become much smaller,” Johnson said.
“Yes.”
“Even if we get this right.”
“Yes.”

He looked almost grateful that I had not offered him a cheerful ending. That afternoon, Johnson asked Brian to show him the retail report. I stayed on the veranda. Their voices reached me through the open door.

“Where did this figure come from?”

A pause.

“I need to trace it.”
“What would change your recommendation?”

A longer pause. Then Brian said, “Can you help me work that out?” They spent forty minutes on two pages. Afterwards, Johnson came outside.

“He understands more than I realised.”
“He also needs more than you realised.”
“He could speak to the woman who supplies our office canteen. She’s considering a second outlet.”
“If she wants his help.”
“She mentioned the problem last week.”
“What would he need to learn?”
“Basic unit economics. Customer numbers. Rent. Staffing. He’d have to understand her records.”
“And who checks his work?”

Johnson sat down.

“You’re making this sound like a job.”
“It may be a useful piece of work. Whether it becomes a job depends on more than Brian.”

The supplier might have no money to hire. Her expansion might be unwise. Brian might discover he disliked that work. Johnson reached for his phone, then stopped.

“I’ll ask whether she would be willing to discuss it. I should find out what she needs first.”

It was a modest beginning. Nobody announced that Brian’s future had been solved. By Sunday, Johnson had begun asking questions about 2040.

“Will companies still hire people like me?”
“What do people like you do?”

He gave me his title.

“That is what they call you.”

He tried again. He allocated resources. Judged proposals. Settled arguments between country teams. Persuaded people who did not report to him. Recognised when a reassuring number concealed a problem. Some of that depended on knowing his company intimately. Some might be useful elsewhere. Some he had never had to demonstrate outside a meeting where everybody already knew his rank.

“I don’t know what I’d be without the company,” he said.

I understood that. A petrol station can become a person’s address in the world. I told him how I could read a busy forecourt and still miss a change taking place beyond it.

“Experience helps,” I said. “It also gives you convincing reasons to keep looking in the same direction.”

He asked what I thought work would look like in 2040.

“I would distrust a man who answered too quickly.”

We talked about possibilities instead. A smaller company purchasing specialist judgment for particular assignments. A large company using powerful tools but retaining teams to verify work and carry responsibility. Buyers bringing more research inside their own organisations. Each possibility raised a question Johnson could investigate now. Who would trust his judgment outside his present role? Which skills needed renewing? What work could he try without abandoning his income? What would the family need if the transition took longer than expected? Anne joined us.

“And who has time for all this preparation?” she asked. “Between work, children, parents and being tired?”

Johnson moved his laptop to make room for her tea. It was the most useful interruption of the weekend. Before I left, we spoke again about the gatekeeper. His name was Samuel. The new system had changed his work. He monitored cameras, checked unfamiliar visitors and dealt with deliveries the software could announce but could not sensibly place in the household.

“Has anyone trained him?” I asked.
“A little.”
“Has his pay changed?”
“No.”

Johnson went to speak with him. I watched them from the car. I could not hear the conversation. There were limits to what a visiting uncle could discover in a weekend. Samuel had his own account of the future of work. So did the gardener, the canteen supplier and the people who would receive Johnson’s decisions on Monday. I had spent most of my visit listening to the people inside the house. At the gate, Johnson handed back a notebook I had left on the veranda. He had written a question on a blank page.

What can I do that remains useful when the company no longer needs what it currently pays me to do?

Underneath, in Brian’s handwriting, was another.

Where can I get a fair chance to learn?

Anne had added:

And what should we stop spending money on while we find out?

I put the notebook in my bag. As we pulled away, Samuel lifted a hand. I waved back. My nephew had invited me to Nairobi partly to talk some sense into his son. By the end of the visit, he had asked whether he could come to Kirabo for a few quiet days.

“Bring the notebook,” I told him.

The family and company in this story are fictional.

Uncle Rwamiti the uncle your parents should probably not have introduced you to🙂