Catherine was explaining what the multi-level business was all about. I would invite my friends to take part, doing the very same three things (using the products, sharing the products, sharing the opportunity) that I was doing, and together all of us would make money. As they got their friends, and friends of those friends involved, these would be the successive levels we would be building as we went.
Earlier I had paid for a 'starter kit' containing literature items and some products to use and demonstrate to people around me. At this gathering, called 'kit opening' I had invited some friends to come and hear for themselves. Three of them made a decision to start and would pay for their kit the following week.
Catherine made me compile a list of people I knew, whom she would help me to contact with the aim of inviting them to a presentation meeting. She would show me how to do this effectively without wasting effort, or causing people to lose interest.
The following day my sponsor (for that was what Catherine was) helped me make the initial contacts from my namelist. We called a former schoolmate, my chairman at church, my first cousin, and a former colleague at the bank. This was called holding a downlines hand.
They all, with the exception of the schoolmate, committed to attend the next meeting early the following week. Sapentia, my former schoolmate, had moved from Nairobi to her hometown of Kaloleni, some 400 km away. We also called the three people who had signaled interest during my kit opening.
By the end of that week I had signed up four people, held kit openings for two of them and two others were scheduled for the weekend. Some others had bought product, giving me my first taste of MLM money in terms of profits from those sales. Catherine and I decided to travel to Mombasa for Sapientia's people. I could see I was not to have an idle weekend for the foreseeable future. On the way down by train Catherine surprised me by confessing that she herself was no long-time expert in the business. She had preceded me by a mere three weeks.
"But you carry yourself with so much assurance!" I was thunderstruck.
"Jim, that means you can do the same. If I, a former executive secretary could do it, you would be even better, and in a much shorter time," she encouraged me.
Sapentia met us at Mwembe Tayari bus terminal. She was as I remembered her from our schooldays, a plump, dark-complexioned beauty. Now being older, her body had filled out pleasingly. Her allure to me welled up all over again.
"Welcome to Mvita!" she chirruped happily.
"Thank you," I responded in like manner, embracing her closely. She clung to me warmly, creating a sexual spark.
We broke the embrace reluctantly. "Come and have a cup of tea to wash down the dust of the road," she invited both of us, still holding Catherine's hand. We were already dripping with sweat, unused to this coastal climate. Catherine was unsure about taking a hot drink.
Sapentia responded, "If you take a soda, the body draws heat inwards to warm that which is cold, instead of radiating it outwards. That is why we here take tea or coffee to encourage sweating, the hotter, the better. As the sweat evaporates from the skin it draws heat from the body, thereby cooling you down."
Catherine was as amazed at this bit of biophysics as I was. We enjoyed a refreshing cup each and were amazed at how effectively it chased our thirst away, in the process stimulating heavy sweating. But the aircon blew the sweat away and we found that we had cooled dramatically. We looked at Sapentia with new respect.
We piled into her car for the 40-minute journey to her village. I let Catherine take the front passenger seat, allowing her and Sapentia to get to know each other better, while I sat in the back. Forty kilometers later, at Mariakani we branched to the northward, shot through a number of small towns, until the tarmac gave out.
"Fortunately for you there has been some rain in the last few days. The dust would have been unbearable," our host told us.
It did not seem to be fully 40 minutes before we shot through Kaloleni town, arriving at Sapentia's home a few minutes later. I only wanted to have a bath to wash off all the sweat and dust but was counseled to wait until nightfall. The reason was to give us one of the shocks of the place.
Her husband, Ali welcomed us with evident joy. We were offered a refreshing beverage made of ground millet, then fermented. By the time we finished that we found ourselves in the company of a sizeable group.
"I had invited a set of my friends for you to talk to, but stories travel fast here in our close-knit community. All these people have come to see the visitors," Sapentia supplied.
"Shall I give these who have arrived a short presentation?"
"It'd be better to do a product demo for such a group," my sponsor corrected me.
We demonstrated two cleaning products, getting exclamations of wonder from the small audience. A demo was usually about an hour's worth, but the people asked question after question. I also allowed more touching and feeling of the surfaces to be cleaned, the detergents and the final result, so that we found we had gone past the 90-minute mark.
Then Catherine was pulled away quietly. Before I wondered too long about what could be going on, a man wearing a welcoming smile called me apart. He led me behind a group of huts, telling me my bath water was ready. No wonder they waited for dark to fall!
Somewhere to my left in the darkness I heard Sapentia's voice also headed for her bath, directing someone where to place the water. I kept on with mine until the woman who was attending her withdrew. I grabbed the container with my water, threw my clothes over my wet shoulder and crouched-ran to where I thought I had heard her voice. Just before I got to where Sapentia's water was splashing as she washed, I thought, 'What if there were a log, or a gutter? Won't I fall in? I can hardly see anything in this darkness!' I slowed down in sudden alarm.
But I could already see her vaguely in the dim light. Slowly I crept forward until I put my container down two feet from her, whispering her name. She covered her mouth to stop the scream that had sprung in her throat. I siezed her wet, slippery, naked body in my arms. I spun her around to kiss her ravenously. She sought my swiftly hardening cock, massaged it to its full fury, lifted her leg and guided my now rampant member into her hot channel. I had no idea she was this hungry. How wet she was!
We fucked like rabbits in the dark, with people in the nearby huts, or going about their business not far away. The risk of being found out added to our excitement causing us to come on the instant. She held me tightly by my buttocks until her orgasm subsided.
We finished each our ablutions, dried ourselves before dressing up, and taking up the containers that came with the water. To allay any suspicion, we returned to the courtyard ringed by the huts via different routes.
We were served a supper of biryani rice, with a rich meat stew. We ate quickly because there was a already sizeable crowd in the shelter we were going to conduct presentations in.
Just as when I had given demos earlier, Catherine's presentation took far longer than the usual, for the same reasons. But then this was a far more informal setting than usual!
