Pride comes before a fall for men who lose track of script

Peter KimaniI could hardly recognise William Ruto without his trademark hat, which many know as Ruto-hat, when he appeared at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Wednesday night.
In fact, his close-shaven pate looked like an upturned pot, with the dozen microphones, ready to record any gasp of his breath, resembling firewood to stoke fire to bring the pot to boil.
But the Ruto-hat, bearing colours of the national flag was in abundance, and I wondered if Ruto, once a serious Christian, had mastered the art of multiplying hats, same way Jesus did over 2,000 years ago when he fed thousands from morsels of bread and strips of fish.
As a matter of fact, the expression that came to mind was that there was as many Ruto-hats as njugu karanga, the dried and fried nuts that Ruto sold by the roadside in his childhood to supplement the family income.
I think a little hair had grown by the time Ruto reached The Hague, in the Netherlands, for his head appeared more recognisable when he appeared in court Thursday.
He must have been making trips down memory lane, I thought, thinking about how far he has travelled since those njugu karanga days, particularly because he had brought his sister with him, alongside his wife and daughter.
I momentarily lost interest in Ruto when he sat next to Henry Kosgey and Joshua arap Sang. The latter surprised me at how short he really is, and for a while, I couldn’t quite tell whether he was seated or standing. With one arm in a cast, Sang looked like a war veteran, although he did not say who broke his arm. He did, however, vigorously claim that his rights had been violated by the International Criminal Court prosecutor.
But Ruto remained most colourful of the three, face changing from solemn to grave, grave to grey, then black, as the smiling ICC judge with a beautiful name, Ekatarina, ordered some official to read the charges facing the trio. Henry Kosgey appeared to forget where he is from; he pronounced his constituency Tinderet something close to "tinder-box" when he rose to introduce himself.
But Ruto was mercurial spelling out the exact distance to his Eldoret North constituency, one would think he was directing the smiling Judge to his mother’s house. It was a meek attempt at grandstanding, an act of despair for the benefit of the honourable members wearing Ruto-hats, as many as njugu karanga.
What Ruto did not realise is that the smiling judge often referred to him and the others as "suspects." He had ceased being an honourable mheshimiwa with crowds of admirers, to a suspect criminally responsible for a raft of crimes that ranged from rape to murder.