Still nursing their weekend blues and likely hoping to ease into the week with tea and slow-loading emails, civil servants at the Rift Valley Regional Headquarters were hit with a plot twist on Monday.

They couldn’t get into work. Gava ilijifungia nje.

Public Service CS Geoffrey Ruku decided to conduct a Monday morning performance audit na kifuli ya landlord, leaving workers stranded at the gate.

Yes, the same government offices where Kenyans line up at dawn, only to be told “system iko down” or “rudi kesho na ID ya mtoto wa Class 4,” and where coats hang on Ntimama chairs like placeholders for ghost workers.

Classical was “pale kwa audit office” where coats clung to chair backs like silent witnesses and papers lay scattered on desks, unmoved and untouched.

The only balancing likely to happen was of tea flasks poised on those same desks by nine o’clock.

Kwa marriage certificates... imagine public servants walichelewesha hata ndoa. The section sat still, with a few people seated, clutching brown envelopes and hope, wondering if love can survive the silence of a locked government office.

But they say marriage tests your patience. Maybe this was the test before the certificate.

For once, no one had a solid excuse for lateness. Or maybe they did. Just the classics: “gari ilikwama,” “nilikuwa na mtu kwa ofisi ya chief.”

But there they stood, humbled faces, crisp clothes, and the realization dawning faster than tea and lunch breaks disappear in a government office.

Many may call it accountability, and for a fleeting, glorious moment, the custodians of delay were delayed by their own indiscipline.

But while the stunt won headlines like it was meant to, it also exposed a system that performs PR better than it delivers public service.

Let’s hope that next time you show up at 8:01 a.m. for an ID, someone remembers that morning they too walifungiwa milango and wakajipata nje.

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Leleti Jassor